The way to avoid environmental apocalypse is not to end poverty but to end wealth writes Julia Stephenson

 

 

 

I am very taken by the current edition of The Idler, titled “How To Save The World Without Really Trying” which argues that idleness is eco-friendly and that to save the planet we need to do a lot less.

This is a premise that philosopher, Blaise Pascal, also held. `I have discovered that all human evil comes from this; man’s being unable to sit still in a room’. He wrote this in 1660, so it’s rather a case of plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

Tom Hodginson, editor of The Idler, reckons that the habits of the wealthy and their addiction to relentless doing, (buying, consuming, travelling), is the prime cause of the world’s problems. 

“One way to avoid environmental catastrophe,’ he writes, `would be not to end poverty but to end wealth. It is wealth, not poverty that makes the problems… This is why I would recommend that every family and individual try to earn and spend less money, not more. Use your imagination to live well on less each year. This way you will consume less and so create less pressure on the world’s resources. Ending global wealth may be the only way out of our predicaments.” 

It’s actually very hard to be green and wealthy. If you’re worth a few bob you’re more likely to own several houses, cars and enjoy scores of gas guzzling luxurious holidays in far flung parts of the world. You will be tempted to splash out on exotic consumerables, fancy clothes and alligator handbags. 

But before you buy that Birkin, STOP and THINK! Don’t let seductive glossy magazines; Victoria Beckham and ridiculous advertising campaigns turn you into an affluenza victim!

William Leith castigates consumerism in his 2 depressing but utterly readable novels, The Hungry Years and Bits of Me are Falling Apart.

Everything is a commodity’, he writes in Bits of Me are Falling Apart. `Just look at, God, I don’t know, anything. Like body hair, women used to shave their legs and armpits and pluck their eyebrows and get their hair cut. Now they wax their legs and shave their armpits and trim their pubic hair and wax their pubic hair and dye their eyelashes and tint their hair simultaneously with several colours and supplement it with hair extensions, and every new activity requires tools and materials, such as trimming devices and depilatory creams and laser hair-removal machines. Now men are waxing their chests, and soon they’ll be shaping and trimming their pubic hair. It’s economic growth. It’s unstoppable. 

And now retailers are hiring experts to advise them on how to sell more stuff, experts who cheerfully tell us that, if it wasn’t for impulse purchasing, if it wasn’t for people buying stuff that they don’t strictly need, or even want, `the economy would collapse’. 

We live in a world where the accumulation of riches and the acquisition of expensive clothes, cars and property are seen as a prerequisite for happiness. We envy the beautiful and the rich and feast on their fortunate lives in glossy magazines. But this pointless race to accumulate destroys our spirit and the planet. Yet it’s so easy to be sucked into the race without thinking about it. 

Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda explains the cause of our rampant consumerism and its affect on the planet.

`A barren, destructive mind produces a barren, devastated natural environment. The desertification of our planet is created by the desertification of the human spirit’.

So, let’s follow the Idler’s Manifesto and do our bit! 

THE IDLERS Freedom Manifesto

BAKE BREAD

MUCK ABOUT

QUIT MOANING

STOP CONSUMING

START PRODUCING

BACK TO THE LAND

SMASH USURY

EMBRACE BEAUTY

IGNORE THE STATE

HAIL THE SPADE

HAIL THE QUILL

LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR

BE CREATIVE

DIG THE EARTH

MAKE COMPOST

DOWN WITH HEALTH

DOWN WITH SAFETY

DOWN WITH WORK

DOWN WITH PENSIONS

BE ALIVE

BE MERRY

Be FREE!

Hurrah!