The Story of Stuff

This is depressing but a very important message. A little heavy on propaganda but a lot of truth and boy is it loaded on food for thought and the ultimatel message is exactly the issue that is on top of my list of concerns...

It is 20 minutes but so worth the watch. Pass it along. Maybe if enough people watch it our mindsets will start to collectively change. This really is probably one of the biggest problems our country faces.

At the very end, there is a short up note on work and progress toward solving the problem. And most important, I really couldn't agree with her message more.

And this quote by Victor Lebow?

"Our enormously productive economy ... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption.... we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."

According to wikipedia,
"Victor Lebow was a 20th century economist, widely known for his quotation regarding the formulation of American consumer capitalism found in his paper "Price Competition in 1955" (Journal of Retailing, Spring 1955) and more recently publicized in the short film Story of Stuff. In the film it is implied that Lebow's quote was a prescription for the economy to come, but when taken in context, it is contended as to whether his intents were prescription or critique."

But I found an even better post by Steve, with some really in depth contributing comments on Victor Lebow here. Seems Mr. Lebow was quite the prophet of consumerism, predicting the long term problems it would produce. 60 years later his predictions seem pretty much right on target.

From what one of the commenters on the above referenced post says, Victor Lebow was one of the early small retailers to get hit by a "big box" retailer (Woolworths), and went on to write articles and books on subjects related to consumerism. One of the "anonymous" comments on this post (why anonymous? this person did a lot of research and should get credit for it!) has quite a lot of back story on Mr. Lebow.

Anyway, read the post and comments too if you have time!