consumption

so...a couple of things have caught my attention and started me thinking. among them the fact that i'll be fifty-five soon ( doesn't that qualify me as a senior citizen? doesn't feel like it) which, by itself, doesn't mean much, but it does help explain why i've suddenly ( at least it seems sudden) realized that seventy-five percent of the children don't live here anymore ( the youngest still does, but he turned twenty-one this month and his days are numbered, i think) and my spending is down for almost everything...the mortgage is still the same, but things like utilites, automobile insurance, and groceries have dropped off quite a bit. this may have come at a fortutitous moment...i work in an industry directly related to housing and things are a bit slow...we've been working four day weeks since february, and my income is down by a few thousand compared to last year, which brings me (finally) to my point...i don'treally miss the income, counter to engineered societal norms i don't need more. four days? okay. i'm still solvent ... i have a 401k and an ira and a savings account...they're still getting their regular deposits, my outstanding bills are being paid on time, and i'm still eating...so if i didn't really need those missing thousands, where did they go when they were here? spent on stuff i didn't need as far as i can tell. it's true i'm addicted to books, but at an average of twenty dollars a week that's still only a thousand and forty bucks a year, and because of my declining dependents i paid the feds last year, but that still doesn't cover the difference. it must've gone for innumerable items i cannot discern amidst the clutter derived from the consumerist utopia...i look around and find myself asking "how much do i really need?" how much of this stuff was impulse buys and how much do i really need as opposed to how much i was told i needed? it's time for some physical and philosophical housekeeping ( and so the nom de guerre of this blog)...time to explore what i have and why...look for better alternatives...easier on the environment...easier on me...look for parameters...find limits...examine the whys behind desires and see if i'm working from need rather than someone else's agenda.

do i really need this?

in the nineteeth century john stuart mill questioned the need for a continually expanding economy, remarking on an economy tied to need rather than speculation he observed..."I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition."...aside from the obvious issues that would arise among the terminally greedy, i am inclined to agree...strongly. it would require considerable education and enculturation of new norms...media reform and economic leveling would be high on the agenda. the question remains ...what would prompt the economic elite to co-operate? it wouldn't be voluntary...greed is exclusive of a vision of social responsibillity...possibly exclusive of acknowledging anything but its own existence...violence isn't really an option...it's not ethical and is pretty much the provence of greed itself ( how long could an economy based on the destructive utilization of resources last without the threat of violence to extract those resources from any reluctant group unfortunate enough to be sitting on something empire wants?) and i want to move past greed...freindly persuasion seems like a dead end too...it will take something on the order of a climatic catastrophy, and by then it may be too late...could it be that we're too greedy to see that we may be doomed as a species? too greedy to care? too greedy to stop and take a critical look at ourselves? could be...i'd like to think not...but i need to be shown. the problems are manifold and there is no shortage of obstructionists disguising themselves as reasonable mediators or the posessors of revealed truth ( for the record, i have way more questions than answers...to the extent that i will not really know what i am talking about at times...you can interpret this in any way that suits you, but any interpretation you choose to believe will not make the underlying, objective issues go away) there are so many people with the answer that i cannot possibly compete with them...and there may not be an answer, but i'm going exploring anyway. i refuse to give up hope.