Karmanomics: You Are Already Doing It - Sometimes
We have the world that we have because we have planted the seeds of karma, taken certain actions that have consequences. We have global warming because we have lived in a society that been immersed in a two hundred year orgy of consumption. We have allowed greed and not well-being to be the prime motivator of our economy. If you look at the contents of a large store like Walmart or Target, what do you see? In five years, nearly everything in those enormous stores will be sitting in a land fill. We do not build products for durability because that thwarts consumption. We literally have an economy built solely on consumption and not on more important values like sustainability, well-being or ecological balance. The problem with this that we live on a planet with finite resources and a delicate biosphere. As a matter of sheer mathematics, consumers in a finite space ultimately extinguish themselves because they inevitably run out of things to consume. This happens to other living things as well, most notably viruses. A virus can ultimately consume so much resource that they kill their host.
We have been trained to consume since we were children. Every square inch of our living space is covered in advertising and market messages urging us to buy something. You cannot even look at your cellphone without being bombarded with advertising. We are told who we are and what we should admire by people who sell things to us. We are shamed by marketing into whitening our teeth, to lose weight or to get hair replacement surgery because this never ending voice in our consciousness is constantly telling us who we are and how to behave. We are so mesmerized by the newest cellphone that we are literally killing ourselves. So, the first thing we have do is wake up and look at what is happening. The second thing we need to do is cut ourselves away from the conversation for consumption.
Luckily, there is a paradox in consumer culture. While it appears that companies with unlimited marketing budgets have the power our collective consciousness, it is actually not true. The consumer actually has the power. Do you realize that if we all stopped buying things for one month, we would crash the economy? There is no power elite until you give up your money to them to buy things that you do not need.
Karmanomics is the study and practice of organizing collective economic awareness that allows consumers to band together and use their economic power to improve the world. It is about using your consumer choices to stop companies from polluting or mistreating their workers. Karmanomics actually is already working. For example, when activists started putting pressure on major universities to divest in companies that did business in South Africa in the 1980s, these companies, in turn, put pressure on the South African government to end the practice of Apartheid. There are a great number of companies that are aware that their socio-economic practices matter to their customers. While every company needs customers, they need happy customers. Using the economic leverage of consumption among other economic tools can create a new kind of democracy that is far more powerful than voting for corrupt politicians.
We have been trained to consume since we were children. Every square inch of our living space is covered in advertising and market messages urging us to buy something. You cannot even look at your cellphone without being bombarded with advertising. We are told who we are and what we should admire by people who sell things to us. We are shamed by marketing into whitening our teeth, to lose weight or to get hair replacement surgery because this never ending voice in our consciousness is constantly telling us who we are and how to behave. We are so mesmerized by the newest cellphone that we are literally killing ourselves. So, the first thing we have do is wake up and look at what is happening. The second thing we need to do is cut ourselves away from the conversation for consumption.
Luckily, there is a paradox in consumer culture. While it appears that companies with unlimited marketing budgets have the power our collective consciousness, it is actually not true. The consumer actually has the power. Do you realize that if we all stopped buying things for one month, we would crash the economy? There is no power elite until you give up your money to them to buy things that you do not need.
Karmanomics is the study and practice of organizing collective economic awareness that allows consumers to band together and use their economic power to improve the world. It is about using your consumer choices to stop companies from polluting or mistreating their workers. Karmanomics actually is already working. For example, when activists started putting pressure on major universities to divest in companies that did business in South Africa in the 1980s, these companies, in turn, put pressure on the South African government to end the practice of Apartheid. There are a great number of companies that are aware that their socio-economic practices matter to their customers. While every company needs customers, they need happy customers. Using the economic leverage of consumption among other economic tools can create a new kind of democracy that is far more powerful than voting for corrupt politicians.
Change The Way You Do Business
Mindful ConsumptionTo edit, click on the text to start adding your own words.
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Leave Small FootprintsTo edit, click on the text to start adding your own words.
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Virtue CultureTo edit, click on the text to start adding your own words.
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