Trying to find your way around this place? Like most expositions, we offer a map: 
Or not.
The Compact, in San Francisco, shows regular people doing regular things to reduce consumption. They don't buy anything new. Except maybe shoe polish. Or a drill bit. This Washington Post article discusses the group, whose Yahoo group stood at 1800 strong before the article ran. (They also saw a spike in attention last winter after a similar article in the San Fransisco Chronicle.)
"Some have called the Compactors un-American, anti-capitalist, eco-freak poseurs whose defiant act of not-consuming, if it caught on, would destroy the economy and our way of life." Other's haven't.
The criticism points up why reaction to approaching the consumption problem as the very core of the energy problem is such a deep cultural issue: it asks us to live differently in a culture dominated by a corporate context that needs us to consume more. It opposes the premise that individual happiness derives from consumer options. (Also, and in an interesting article that should've been it's own post way back when (before this blog started, actually), see James Surowiecki on this false "happiness=more stuff" equation, in Technology Review.)
I'll leave it at the link and notice above, but for this too: From the Yahoo page, here's their mission:
The Compact has several aims (more or less prioritized below):To go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of disposable consumer culture and to support local businesses, farms, etc. -- a step that, we hope, inherits the revolutionary impulse of the Mayflower Compact.
To reduce clutter and waste in our homes (as in trash Compact-er).
To simplify our lives (as in Calm-pact)We've agreed to follow two principles (see exceptions etc. on our blog).
#1 Don't buy new products of any kind (from stores, web sites, etc.)
#2 Borrow, barter, or buy used.
Thoreau will ever be around: "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
Comments
"...if it caught on, would destroy the economy and our way of life."
I also hear the related question: "But how will we live, if we don't live exactly the way we do today?!"
The shortage that worries me most is lack of imagination.
It's encouraging to see regular people, with a little imagination, doing regular things that just happen to demonstrate conspicuous reduction.
Thanks for making this visible to a wider audience. Cheers
Posted by: etbnc | December 18, 2006 10:53 AM
I'll join, once I buy my Wii.
I read the original SFC article last year and what was amazing was some of the vehemence against this behavior. It surprised me because it mostly seemed that they were just being very frugal, and since when did frugality become such a sin?
Posted by: quitter | December 18, 2006 2:06 PM
Since World War II. (The other WWii...)
If I were to pin the tail on a date, I would say frugality became an economic, cultural sin after World War II. The trend was noticeable before that war, and with some ways of looking at the mechanism, hyper-consumption may have been pretty much inevitable for the last 10,000 years or so. But from the perspective of folks alive now, I'd say, World War II.
I would describe that amazing vehemence you saw as the reinforcing feedback of our culture attempting to bring some black sheep outliers back into the fold.
Strategic ignorance can be a high-maintenance proposition.
Posted by: etbnc | December 18, 2006 3:57 PM
And I'd add this: in terms of technology -- one aspect of the consumer world -- historians of technology consider the 19th century the century of production and the 20th century the century of consumption. I'm oversimplifying, but the gist is: the 19th gets us standardization, uniformity, interchangeability, assembly lines, scientific management (Taylorism), all providing crucial necessary conditions for the mass production of the early 20th century. Ford, helpful as a representation of pivoting from prod. to cons., has a comment about having cracked mass production, and then needing to conquer mass consumption. And we can think of the rise of marketing and advertising, planned obsolescence, product diversification, and so forth, as the elements of the 20th century's mass consumption. As the prior post notes, post-WWII is certainly a good place to date the confluence of a lot of that. Not the invention of, or beginning of, but a nice picture of confluence (also as noted above).
Posted by: BRC | December 18, 2006 9:52 PM