"Man Transforms raw materials into commodities and commodities into garbage"
Herman Daly- economist
Too much stuff
There is no doubt that most people in the UK have too much stuff in their lives – far more than they need – but why? Why do people buy so much, and why is it so transitory, so short-lived?
The sociologist Anthony Giddens calls the current period one of ‘late’ or ‘high’ modernity, a post-traditional order characterised psychologically by doubt and existential uncertainty. It’s common for people to suffer from low self-esteem, to be pre-occupied with questions like “Who am I?” and “Where is my life going?” “Am I OK?” “Do I fit in?” “What do I want to be?”
These questions seemed incomprehensible or self-indulgent to people of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. They were bewildered by the explosion of self-interest that began in the 1960s with the so-called ‘me’ generation. What they failed to observe was the fragility and insecurity that hid behind the pursuit of self-interest and which is measured in an increase in mental health problems in the same period.
Late modernity is also the period in which capitalism has become intensely focused on consumers and how to sell to them. As old needs are satisfied, new ‘needs’ have to be created. Aggressive marketing techniques have become the norm. Commodities are created and coded around identity markers: people ‘like you’ buy this or that. People ‘like you’ will be excluded or become social pariahs if you do not. Increasingly people buy not objects but identity; they are purchasing self-confidence and a place in the social world.
There’s a neat fit between the needs of capital to sell to consumers and the contemporary fragility in people’s identities. In the past people defined themselves primarily through family relationships, geography, locality, workplace and culture – all of which remained relatively stable. In contemporary society people ‘choose’ their identity, along with their opinions, their friendship groups, their religion and beliefs. 40 years ago for example religion was something you were born into. In 2010 it can be a question of choice: Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Pagan, are all on offer to the discerning customer who cares to shop around. Identity is much more plastic, much more vulnerable and these vulnerable identities are supported by buying into the ‘right’ consumer options and life-style. People feel temporarily soothed and satisfied by their purchases.
This has serious consequences for those of us who wish to persuade others to reduce their impact on our fragile world and its resources. It means that asking people to reduce and reuse commodities can be hard. Unless you self-consciously adopt a life of voluntary simplicity, identifying yourself in a place on the fringes of society, it is hard to make do with less. It is not easy to be different, to be excluded from those objects that the rest of your social group aspire to. So asking people to reduce and reuse can threaten one of the major ways that people find social acceptance and psychological stability, leaving them feeling fragile and unsure.
Too much rubbish
What about the other side of the transition? What happens psychologically when we come to get rid of the stuff we no longer want, the stuff that no longer fits with the social identity we aspire to?
How we feel about waste has a lot to do with how we think about the clean and the dirty. It’s one of the fundamental distinctions that cultures make and we learn to make it in early childhood. Is this clean and good? Or is it dirty and dangerous? Here’s a story:
When I was 19 I worked as an au pair looking after twins, Jamie and Lucy who had just turned three. I slept in a room with a connecting door to their bedroom and I woke one morning about 6am to hear them playing. The conversation went something like this:
“Stir it Jamie. Give it a big stir. Now feed Teddy.”
“Teddy likes cake.”
They seemed to be playing some kind of cooking and feeding game. But then a note of tension entered their chatter.
“Need more mixture. Do another one Jamie.”
“I did the last one. Your turn.”
“No you do it.”
“No, you.”
I went through to see what was going on. The twins were sitting on the floor with their potties in front of them, stirring their poo into cakes and patties and feeding this to an assorted row of dollies and teddies.
“Teddy likes cake.”
They seemed to be playing some kind of cooking and feeding game. But then a note of tension entered their chatter.
“Need more mixture. Do another one Jamie.”
“I did the last one. Your turn.”
“No you do it.”
“No, you.”
I went through to see what was going on. The twins were sitting on the floor with their potties in front of them, stirring their poo into cakes and patties and feeding this to an assorted row of dollies and teddies.
They had not yet grasped that fundamental distinction between the clean and the dirty that children learn with toilet training. In playing with their poo they broke one of the strongest taboos of our culture and when their mother came in and saw what they were doing she was ashamed and embarrassed.
Waste, in our culture, as in many cultures is seen as dangerous. It has to be dealt with through prescribed rituals, in specialised ways, according to learned rules. In certain kinds of emotional difficulty you see these rules exaggerated to the point of extreme distress. People who suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder find it very difficult to be sure that they have dealt with waste safely. The usual rituals become exaggerated into compulsive hand-washing, tidying or discarding. Food that is good is thrown away. Almost new items are deemed finished.
You might find it interesting to reflect on the way you feel about something before and after it has been designated waste. The newly sliced piece of bread on your plate is designated clean. 10 minutes later the unwanted portion of it is designated dirty. There is no material change in the bread. It is no more damaged or unhygienic. It is simply been reclassified. The same might be said for the empty tin or the discarded jumper. Once something is designated as waste, it seems to change its characteristics. It feels unattractive, shameful, dirty, contaminated and must be dealt with in the proper way.
For most people, getting it wrong with regard to personal waste of any kind, whether it is faeces or any other kind of rubbish, commonly produces feelings of anxiety and shame and the fear of humiliation. (Less commonly, people show defiance with regard to the taboo and deliberately break it. If you want to challenge society, throwing rubbish around, digging up graves, smearing faeces on prison walls – as in the political protests in the Maze prison – are all ways of doing this.)
One consequence of this is that situations of ambiguity, where it isn’t clear which category something belongs in, whether something is waste or not-waste, is clean or dirty can be a source of anxiety. If you’re no longer sure whether something is waste or not – what should you do?
So changing the rules about waste is likely to produce anxiety, shame, defiance and some surprising classifications as people adjust their understanding of what is clean, what is dirty, what is pure, what is dangerous.
The introduction of recycling is a case in point. The complaints that people make are often that they don’t know what goes where, that the rules are incomprehensible, that the rules are different in different places, or that recycling is dangerous. People are being asked to move from a very simple classification – everything that is waste goes in the black bin – to a complex one where some waste is valuable and some waste is not and where different rules apply to each different type.
Those who administer recycling schemes have sometimes placed themselves in the position of a punitive enforcer – for example, refusing to take waste that is not in the right place (beside the bin and not in it or classified in the wrong way), leaving a humiliating mess outside the owner’s front door.
About 20 years ago when staying on a campsite in Germany we searched for recycling bins and, failing to find any, concluded that even in Germany campsites didn’t recycle their rubbish. We placed all our assorted waste in the one small bin we could find. Later that day the campsite warden accosted us, berated us and – having led us to the massive recycling bins hidden round the back – forced us to go through our rubbish while she watched and directed us to put it in the correct places. In her eyes no amount of shaming was sufficient for us dirty English.
People fear humiliation and are likely to feel angry if they think they have been
unfairly and humiliatingly treated when rules have been changed. Altering rules that concern a taboo subject requires special sensitivity because of the deep-seated, psychological adherence to these unwritten laws.
My Evaluation
She begins by talking about how people have to many objects in their life and why is this the case. She mentions how companies since the 1960's have become very aware in how to properly sell to the public, by making items desirable. The way they do this is by selling and advertising the lifestyle that comes with the item they are trying to sell. This makes the buyer feel like they won't be accepted in society if they don't fit with the normal conventions by buying this new item, that is now 'a must have item!', basically companies are playing on the publics ideology of what they think they should do to fit in and be accepted. She also goes onto mention how people feel temporarily soothed and satisfied by their purchases, and thus makes them feel more relaxed every time they buy something. This means that in her case, which she is fighting global warming, it is difficult to persuade people to cut down on their purchasing power and 'out with the old, in with the new' mentality because its like asking them to make them selves an outsider in society.
She then goes onto talking about getting rid of the items they no longer want. She mentions how we feel about waste has a lot to do with how we feel about the clean and the dirty, and that since we were children we have been raised in a way to throw away old and tired things and cherish those that are new. So it is no doubt that our mentality is fixed on 'out with the old in with the new'. Waste in our culture, as in many cultures is seen as dangerous, which is why you get people not wanting to deal with it or even consider it after they have thrown it away. She goes onto mention how changing rules about waste is likely to produce anxiety, shame, defiance and some surprising classifications as people adjust their understanding of what is clean, what is dirty, what is pure, what is dangerous. I think this comment works really well in my series because I am already seeing objects that could've been used in some other way, and would not be considered waste in other societies but because of the way we have been raised and our social conventions we fall into this pattern with buying everything new and then throwing it away at the first sight of it not being new or desirable anymore. This speech will help me understand why people throw out the things they do, and what I might discover as waste as I continue my project to large scale scrap yards.