I was doing some research today on freegans. I love the idea of people using the excess food that stores and restaurants throw away and living off of it. It breaks my heart when I consider that we throw away of 50% of the food we produce. That is maddening! How could we be so frivilous, when so much of the world is dying of hunger. A child dies every 5 seconds from hunger. 5 seconds. And we're throwing food, good food in the trash. Yes, I throw food away too. And it sickens me. Lord forgive us for living so selfishly, and carelessly, for thinking that we are entitled to live so lavishly. How many times have I complained because I don't like what I'm eating? Too many. Praise God I have food. My mom told me stories about her actually not having food to eat. One time she said they licked salt for dinner, because they had nothing else. Another time they ate garlic. There was even a time when there was no water in the well. So my grandmother, (We call her Madea), sat on the porch and prayed, and God sent rain. They ran inside to get buckets to catch their water.
Americans don't seem to need God like that anymore.
Ok, so I was doing some research on freegans and came across an interesting site:
www.thestoryofstuff.com My daughter and I watch the movie they produced called, "The Story of Stuff". It is quite enlightening. Much of it I already knew from reading"Confessions of an Eco-sinner". Something like that. But I did discover an interesting quote that I'd like to share. It was an excerpt of an article written in 1955 by Victor Lebow, a Marketing Consultant, for the Spring 1955 issue of the
Journal of Retailing. I found the entire article online at: http://hundredgoals.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/journal-of-retailing.pdf
The article
Here's an excerpt of the article. It's quite eyeopening! Remember this was written in a journal for retailers.
"The Real Meaning of Consumer Demand
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 satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.
These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat,drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole “do-it-yourself” movement are excellent examples of “expensive” consumption.
What becomes clear is that from the larger viewpoint of our economy, the total effect of all the advertising and promotion and selling is to create and maintain the multiplicity and intensity of wants that are the spur to the standard of living in the United States..."
"Strong Influence of Television
Probably the most powerful weapon of the dominant producers lies in their use of television. To a greater degree than ever before a relative handful of products will share a monopoly of most of the leisure time of the American family. We will have over 30 million television households next year. And television achieves three results to an extent no other advertising medium has ever approached. First, it creates a captive audience. Second, it submits that audience to the most intensive indoctrination. Third, it operates on the entire family."
What do you think? Have we been duped?
God help us! We're enslaved and we don't even know it.
