Our whole western society is addicted to consumption. Like alcohol or drug addiction, the substance isn’t the problem for the addict; it’s the medicine.
Consumption, the way we experience it, depends on exploitation. We move through the world and take what we need to satisfy the need to consume, which allows us to feel fulfilled.
Granted, consumption is essential to the degree it sustains us, both physically and emotionally. The real problem is knowing what is enough. We apparently lost the ability to judge that sometime in our past. Western science, and resulting technology, give us the ability to exploit the resources of our world to previously unimaginable extent. Many of us became materially wealthy in a way only a select few could attain in the past. Many of us abandoned religion and/or spirituality. We didn’t need that anymore to satisfy us. We had all this wealth.
To get to where we are now, we needed to take a lot, and as we had more, particularly food, we could support more of us. Population expanded. More mouths to feed meant we needed to take even more, but now we are running into the limits of what we can take because there’s only so much of everything in the Earth. We can only take so much before the natural systems change, deplete, alter to adapt to what they’ve lost to secure our needs. Some of those changes are scary. They’re starting to scare more and more of us.
Are we to blame? Were we not just doing what we needed to do for a good life?
The answer to that question is in seeing how addicts work. They need the substance they’re addicted to. It’s their medicine. It’s not the problem. But are addictions not universally destructive?
We are addicted to material consumption.
The town I live in, my home, where I was born and raised, originated to support an extractive industry. At its heyday, it was one of the biggest and best in the world. It grew up on what was one of a number of villages of indigenous people who were here when the original inhabitants of our town came here. The main resource exploited for that industry was trees. The forests were logged/harvested for over a century to support the paper mill. Little if any of the benefits extracted were initially shared with the indigenous people.
They also suffered from European diseases that we unintentionally brought with us. It seems some of our predecessors actually spread the diseases among them deliberately. They were in the way. Are we to blame for that now? Isn’t that like being blamed for our way of life? But what if our way of life is more like an addiction? Are we living like addicts depending on consumption to survive? I think so.
If that’s true, what now?
A step to finding our way back to balance, to understanding and only consuming what we really need is to seek what is enough. What is enough for us to live and thrive? That requires us to face the reality that we’re taking more than we need. It may be as tough to face as an addiction is tough to face. And many addicts die of their addictions.
A while back, a question was posed by the leadership of this region’s indigenous community to the leadership of our town: “Would you consider changing the name of the town?” It’s the name of one of the colonial governors who contributed to how they got run over and ignored during the development of this town, and in the process of that, suffer the damage many suffered in residential schools.
These indigenous people have reemerged from a tough period in their history. They have started to thrive again, possibly ironically within the very system that exploited the world that was their home before “western culture” arrived. So, we’ve inherited the world we now share.
Are we of this western culture to blame for hardship and suffering of the past? Are we guilty for acts of our ancestors? Should we be ashamed of this? What use would that be?
These attitudes are about as useful as shame and guilt to an addict. Just more blocks in the way. And certainly, blocks for those who feel pride in all the good in our community. It’s who we are. We’re proud of that, and our name defines us, regardless of problems in the past.
The problem is, we carry not just the heritage of our past but the effects of consumption-driven exploitation that is now biting us in the ass; all of us. The question of our name triggers this truth, whether we recognize it or understand it, or not. And who actually understands this addiction? Climate science tries to, and it is scary. I think it only scratches the surface. The bottom line is, we need a much deeper sense of relationship with our world. That may require some deep introspection; the kind needed by addicts who seek freedom from the addiction. It can begin with the question, what is enough?
Until then I don’t think we can face the question posed to us by our indigenous neighbours. What of the name of our town? What does it really mean deeper down?
It’s not just a question for us, thought of as settlers. We may be more recent. It would probably be good for all humans to consider ourselves guests in this world, on Earth. It might help us face the question of our addiction to consuming it so we can collectively discover how to live here sustainably.
I know we can beat addiction. I’ve always considered it a medical problem. It can be healed. And when we proceed down that path together, perhaps we will deserve a new name because we will have created a new reality for ourselves, for those around us, and for our world.
We can do this1.
Rob Southcott 