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The New Puritans
Move over metrosexuals, a new movement is afoot:
They're the New Puritans. A generation of young, educated and opinionated people determined to sidestep the consumerist perils of modern life. So if you own a 4x4, spend all your time shopping, or are simply overweight - watch your back.
This, from the Guardian, which defines this "moral minority" as a characteristically British movement - in part, a response to American consumer excess. But after Charles's and my recent bout with the puritans in our midst, I'm not so sure.
The New Puritans sounds a lot like the Voluntary Simpletons to me, with minor differences: their prohibitionist stance against drug and drink, for instance. And the lack of capital required. (Perhaps the ultimate irony of the "live simply" movement in the States is that only the wealthy can afford it.)
But the impulse to attack one's fellows based on what they consume -- and to self-righteously applaud one's own choices -- is as deeply ingrained here as anywhere.
Much as I love the Reverend Billy and genuinely appreciate his style of street theater, screaming at shoppers for consuming strikes me as bit like trying to cure alcoholics by shouting STOP DRINKING. It may make for good theater but otherwise it's more annoying than helpful. (Kinda like those PETA actions that make you want to eat kittens.)
There are no shortage of ills associated with our consumer culture and there is a great deal that personal responsibility can accomplish. Yes. But considering that, for example, two-thirds of American adults and 15% of children are obese, I think it's pretty clear that the underlying problems here are social issues... and that institutional changes will go a lot farther than name-calling.
(via Consuming Things)
Posted by carrie on 10/26/2005 | Permalink
Comments
It doesn't take being rich to live simply. Most of the visible "simple living" stuff is a scam to sell things, and so is not really simple living at all. There are many people for whom living simply isn't expensive: we just don't bother with finding a platform to tell everybody about it. Our own household income is well under $30K, and we find it very easy to live simply, or, we find that we're "living more with less".
Posted by: Robin | Oct 26, 2005 12:48:57 PM
Jeebus! Reading all of the controversy about your wedding has me convinced that the blogosphere is little more than an evil tool to faciliate Americans hating each other from their living rooms. You'd think that Carrie would be wearing a kitten-fur bridal gown and the event would be held on an oil rig designed especially for the occasion, with the feast taken directly from Petronius' SATYRICON.
One of the things I've always liked about SF! is its embrace of the condratictions inherent in consumer critique in our current culture.. Carrie, along with Steve Duncombe and a few other activists I knew at the time, has been a tremendous influence on my thinking, and it shows in my writing, teaching, and what little activism I do these days.
Anyway, congratulations. I have never met Charles, but gosh, I like his posts! You are in all likelihood a great couple and I wish you much happiness.
Posted by: Jason Grote | Oct 26, 2005 6:07:07 PM
Robin,
I wasn't referring to the practice of trying to live simply but rather the "movement," which I associated with AFFLUENZA, a terrible PBS documentary that says nothing about corporate power and places the burden of righting the consumer society's wrongs on individual shoppers.
Posted by: carrie | Oct 27, 2005 11:09:11 AM
Well, the individual shoppers do have to take SOME responsibility, don't they? Corporations do exercise an unconscionable amount of influence over us, but at the end of the day, we ain't zombies. Nobody MAKES you plop down your Amex, you know?
Posted by: Max Roswell | Oct 27, 2005 1:44:41 PM
Well, the individual shoppers do have to take SOME responsibility, don't they?
Yes, of course.
Posted by: carrie | Oct 27, 2005 1:50:20 PM
Carrie,
I scarcely watch TV, so I don't know about AFFLUENZA. We watch a couple of shows on the CBC (from across Lake Superior) but mostly listen to CBC Radio. But, I do know about this "movement". I see evidence of it at our food co-op which is a case in your point: it has gone, over thirty or so years, from an attempt to get good food cheap to a trendy place which we can only afford a few things. The most important remnant from those days is the chance to buy in bulk. Also, they buy our kale (and sell it for more than we could afford).
If you have good light in a window, you can grow something--even if it is herbs.
Posted by: Robin | Oct 27, 2005 8:07:49 PM
The New Puritans - what a bunch of crashing bores! All that tooth decay in in the UK must be fucking up their minds. Sounds to me like they all just need to have a good, sweaty, smelly fuck!
Posted by: Lynne | Oct 28, 2005 7:49:33 AM
"Jeebus! Reading all of the controversy about your wedding has me convinced that the blogosphere is little more than an evil tool to faciliate Americans hating each other from their living rooms."
No, the blogosphere allows people to be honest in a way not possible before. Be thankful insight it allows; we never see ourselves as clearly as a stranger see us.
Posted by: Tamara | Oct 28, 2005 10:50:11 AM
a New Puritan does not binge drink, smoke, buy big brands, take cheap flights, eat junk food, have multiple sexual partners, waste money on designer clothes, grow beyond their optimum weight, subscribe to celebrity magazines, drive a flash car, or live to watch television. And the list is likely to grow longer: research by the Future Foundation has found that 80 per cent of people agreed that alcohol should not be allowed at work at all; 25 per cent said snack products should not be offered at business meetings; more than a third agreed that we should think twice before giving sweets and chocolates as gifts to family and friends, and a further 25 per cent thought that 'the government should start a campaign to discourage people from drinking alcohol on their own at home'
Posted by: Stephanie_B | Oct 29, 2005 9:53:27 AM
It’s nice to know that despite the depredations of multiculturalism, our American Puritan heritage of outlawing other people’s nasty sinful pleasures is still going strong. Maybe soon we’ll be tossing people in jail for nasty sinful opinions, like they do in Sweden.
Posted by: Beale_J | Oct 29, 2005 12:26:32 PM
HOMO SAPIENS?
I am almost sure there have been, and indeed are, very few human beings who have failed to perform an unselfish act during their lifetime. I can easily imagine Joseph Stalin sharing the remains of the Soviet equivalent of a packet of Maltesers with his daughter Svetlana - at least before they stopped talking to each other. Then again, think of Adolf Hitler in the bunker in Berlin. He is besmirching his lederhosen at the thought of being caught by the Russkies, but still manages to say “schnell mein liebling Eva” encouraging his newlywed wife to commit suicide first so that he may be sure she doesn’t bungle it. And in a less well known, but equally reprehensible case the American serial killer A.H.Fish (1870 - 1936) who claimed to have murdered upwards of 400 children and eaten many of them (I’ll spare you further details) was regarded as a meek and innocuous old man; gentle and benevolent, friendly and polite. Indeed he read the bible and was devoted to his grandson. So I hardly need mention the uncountable acts of unselfishness performed daily by us, the great mass of humanity who fail to raise our heads above the parapet of notoriety. Thus my first point is clearly made. We are all capable of and responsible for small acts of unmitigated unselfishness on a regular basis.
Those who undertake the raising of children may be responding to the selfish gene, thus ensuring the continuation of the species, but in doing so they are called upon daily, and more importantly, nightly to exercise an almost superhuman unselfishness.
My second point is we are, down to the last man and woman, a bunch of selfish beings.
If there are any out there who do not conform to my theme of gross human selfishness then their number is so minute my computer wouldn’t be able to find a decimal point to express it.
Why so? After the clear demonstration of our good nature, our virtue at the beginning of this piece. I will attempt to explain with an analogy.
Imagine a tolerably comfortable domestic scene. The house is clean and neat. The cushions are plumped, the beds are made, there are sausages and milk and fresh camembert in the fridge and a new toilet roll in the lavatory. The carpets are vacuumed and only the occasional toe clipping lurks beneath the bathroom skirting board. The house at this moment in time is unoccupied although a log fire warms the hearth; all is cosy and welcoming.
Enter a family of nice, kind, reasonable people. The sort who send Christmas cards to maiden aunts, stand patiently at the supermarket check out while an old age pensioner fumbles for his loyalty card and only fart in front of close family members. They seat themselves in front of the fire and as the flames die down they start breaking the furniture for extra fuel. They raid the freezer and the fridge for food, but fail to close the doors. They take more than they need. The milk turns sour, the food rots, the lights blaze day and night. They shit on the floor. In a week disorder holds sway and the house is in ruins. They have not just fouled their own nest, they are well on the way to destroying it and all because of their failure to behave responsibly and unselfishly.
Most of us would be appalled at this behaviour. We can see the error of such attitudes. Some of us see that if we move from the microcosm of the house to the macrocosm of the world that is precisely how we behave. I’m not talking about industrial giants who pollute and consume on a grand scale, or governments whose budgets are heavily swayed in favour of developing and stock piling weapons, although they exacerbate the problem. No - I’m talking about you and me. I know some of us are putting our junk mail and impossibly thick Sunday papers in the green wheelie bin, and taking a crate a week to the bottle bank, even taking time to sort the clear glass from the coloured. Some of us are turning the lights off in the lavvy when we leave, but it is like using a single shot of botox to get rid of the wrinkles on an elephants arse. You see our selfishness kicks in when we respond to our wants. “I want to go on holiday in Australia” “I need to see the grandchildren at least twice a year - sadly they live in Canada” “I love the taste of runner beans and its so nice to be able to eat them all year round” “I love my 4 x 4 - it’s so roomy for the kids and easy to dump the shopping in the back” “With the central heating turned up I spend most of the winter in a T-shirt and shorts. I can’t bear heavy clothes” “I’ve always wanted a sports car and now I can afford it I’m going to have one” “I need more than one bike, one for fast riding, one for shopping, one for off road and a few others just because I like them” “I’m off to a conference in St. Petersburg - its not really my field, but it’s a freebie and I fancy a visit to the Hermitage” and so on ad infinitum. And strangely, wistfully - “I’d like my children/grandchildren to grow up in a better world.
We like to do all these things and more because we can - in the short term. The artist Michael Landy, who in 2001 made the artwork “Breakdown” in which he destroyed everything he owned - a total of 7009 items - said that people tried to make him into a saint for everyone elses sins of consumerism. “But” he said “I am a sinner and I love sinning. In that he spoke for all of us.
“We flush our faeces down the pan with gallons of drinking water and grumble about wind turbines spoiling the view. Governments (except the USA of course) sign up to international agreements to reduce greenhouse gases while simultaneously approving the building of new airports that feed our insatiable desire to move through the air to a place - any place that is not home. We seem impotent in the face of the temptations of constant travel and consumerism - after all it’s what keeps the global economy rolling, not that we are motivated by anything that entertains a broad overview. Some of us recognise that a drop is made of the same substance as the ocean, but we are caught in the matrix of a world culture that is shaped by beings who have advanced their technologies beyond sustainability, beyond control. There are those who believe that another big dose of technology is what we need to dig ourselves out of the hole in which we flounder, others think that all human activity merely enlarges the hole.
What is the point of worrying about it, if I stop being wasteful it isn’t going to make any difference. Everyone in China either owns a car and a fridge or if they don’t they are working their socks off so they can. How can the world maintain exponential growth when its resources are finite? Affluence for the mass of humanity is a global disaster. So lets be happy to be selfish, what else can a mere human do?
I’d really like to address that last question, but I’ve just had a phone call - I’ve won a five week holiday world tour for two and I must get started on the packing.
Posted by: Sleeping Giant | Nov 7, 2005 4:45:03 AM
these new puritans are nothing more then hippies of the new age. This movmement MUST BE STOPPED./
Posted by: icko | Dec 29, 2006 11:55:33 AM
