Editorial 10.12, December 2008, by Deirdre Helfferich Avalanche of Plenty Like many people I know, I have Too Much Stuff. As in, Waaaaaaay Too Much Stuff. And Christmas, that time of wretched excess and crazed crud-buying, is coming. At my day job, our office adopts a family every Christmas through the Love Inc. program. The family provides a wish list, and Love Inc. gives that to an adoptive group like our office to give them the things they are looking for. Usually, the lists are pretty basic. These are families who really need some clothes, who can’t buy books or toys or kitchen utensils. Really, what they probably need is an actual house of their own, the electric bill paid, child care, health care, fuel oil, decent food—you know, the kinds of things nobody but Hugo Chavez gives for Christmas. Still, we try to make Christmas special for the family we adopt. The other kind of stuff is everywhere: our dumpsters overflow with toys, clothes, dressers, oddments of all sorts. So does my house. Actually, my house, and my storage shed, and our wood shed, and Hans’ toolshed all are suffering from the Creeping Crap Syndrome. It’s everywhere in our society. It starts with the post office. The USPS has survived as long as it has (not being supported by the federal government the way it used to) because of a delightful invention called Bulk Mail Rate. (Longtime readers of this publication may recall my rant on this subject before—see my editorial in the October/November 2002 issue.) This is a special rate for companies that specialize in Cheap Deals and Great Catalogs and Political Alerts—and mostly, in chewing up old-growth forests—to bring us all a lot of paper trash. Free of charge. And without our even having to ask. Except, of course, that us First Class mail users are subsidizing the postal plague that the bulk mailers zap us with on a daily basis, by paying annual jumps in stamp prices. Pretty soon we’ll be paying a buck to mail a postcard and having to clear out our mailboxes with a shovel. In the meantime, a lot of this paper ends up in our wood stove, heating our house. Then there’s this mad BUY BUY BUY mantra that even our soon-to-be-former Resident-in-Chief seemed to think was the answer to 9/11 (was that weird or what?). Buying cheap crap is akin to religious ecstasy in this country. Recall when the Wal-Mart opened up in Fairbanks and people stayed overnight in the parking lot to be there at the opening, and the military not only gave folks the day off for the event, they gave them a free shuttle bus, and even a priest of some ilk was there to bless the opening? That recent trampling at the door of the Wal-Mart in the Lower 48 doesn’t look so odd to me in light of that. It’s no wonder this country uses twenty-five percent of the world’s resources. We’re addicted to Things as well as oil. I recall a friend of mine who lived in Seattle; he was homeless, but he had Stuff. Lots of it. He couldn’t pass a dumpster without finding something to keep. Of course, he didn’t have a place of his own to put it, so he borrowed space at his friends’ places. This got old pretty quickly, as he sometimes borrowed that space for a year or more. Yet, the things he saved really were useful. It was boggling how people would throw out good clothes, decent furniture, boxes of books, tools, jewelry, pianos…and this in a city with second-hand stores and thrift shops all over. It’s boggling the amount of good things thrown out up here, too. Take it to Value Village, people! I really like Christmas, but the towering piles of things get to me. I think, in my friend’s case, he had a bit of a screw loose: his penchant for collecting things was in some ways compensation for having no stable place to stay, no place of his own. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what’s wrong with the rest of us, too. We crave things because we don’t know how to be at home with what we have. We always have to have more. Now we’re in the midst of a national Ponzi scheme meltdown, with our various financial institutions imploding (except those that practiced that old-fashioned banker’s virtue, prudence: “know your customer, behave in a sensible and prudent way, don't overborrow, and make sure your institutions are built on sound foundations," advises Scottish shadow chancellor George Osborne). We’ve discovered that—surprise!—when you spend more than you actually have, eventually it catches up with you and down you tumble. And all that crap falls on top of you. The avalanche of plenty that hits us every Christmas is as illusory as the stability of our economy, despite the fact that the things we get are cluttering up our house. It costs a lot, and I can’t properly appreciate it. I know that when I make things to give to people for Christmas, I am much more satisfied with the present I give. It means more to me—as when someone does the same for me. There are other ways to give, too: tasks or favors done, a donation to a favored cause, a dinner out. So this year, I’m going to try to practice prudence, and consideration for the finite amount of space in my family and friends’ houses. | ||
 | | |
