sharings things for a better world
I’ve been thinking about consumerism.
Living on a burning planet, with politics that feel like fiction, it’s hard to pin down exactly what’s going wrong, what’s making everything feel like it’s spiralling. Yes, it’s the internet. Yes, it’s greed and the ecological decline that follows. But lately I’ve decided that consumerism is a good place to start if I want to tie some of these strings together. It’s capitalism, sure, but in a broader sense this culture of immediacy we’ve created. We restlessly consume energy, resources, processed food, toxins and information.
We are reckless and, at the same time, powerless consumers in this hyper-capitalist Amazon-age world.
In March, I went to visit a friend in France, after she moved back their in September. We’ve known each other for years, and she’s brought so much to my life – despite the distance, sometimes of our own doing and bad communication and some of it sheer miles. I hadn’t been in touch as much as I should have, and when we spoke in the new year, she suggested I come visit. I’d never been to her family home before, we met at school in the UK so this was the first time I was seeing where she grew up. She met me at the airport in her lovely tiny car and we spent the day in Marseille just being together, walking along the coast and eating lovely food. On the way home the next day we stopping off in the nearest town. Everything was half-done, being patched up and plastered before the tourist season. It all felt quiet and slow, and precious.
We drove back to her house the following day and I met her parents for the first time, despite being friends for eight years. I can’t speak French, to my despair, but meeting them I felt quite emotional really. I did cry a tiny bit, for some reason. Then I got embarrassed but it was dark, so I got away with it.
We spent the weekend walking, picking wild asparagus to cook for dinner, reading, and talking about life and art. Her boyfriend had also moved back to France with her, and spending time with them both in this way was a real gift. I’d met them together in London before, but I feel that cities rarely give you space to really see people in the same way – there never feels as though there’s as much time. I know there is, but somehow I still haven’t mastered it. Three days of being in this wonderful rhythm, moving with the weather and eating with the seasons together reminded me how much I crave that kind of proximity, and how its so radically different to the world I find myself in.
We live in a culture of immediacy, where the hyper-consumer is king. Next-day delivery has changed our brains – we’ve come to expect instant everything; products, dopamine and information. We scroll through feeds like we’re flipping through menus. Even valuable things get left behind, or even if we do pick them up, we’ve probably spent 20 minutes filtering through the irrelevant stuff before we got there, and then we’re onto the next. It’s not all bad – the internet lets us reach infinite audiences and resources, which I will never discredit the importance of. But it’s true that we don’t sit with the majority of what we consume anymore. We have flattened even the most powerful of images against the onslaught of joy, grief, history and future that all sits in our pockets.
In France, I felt rich.
Rich in love and information.
We talked about art and the world. I learnt things. Real things. I came home and I read things, and shared things with my other friends – connecting these points between our separate lives.
It reminded me of how people used to make their histories – through conversation, through presence. Oral histories. Stories. That now feels like the most radical form of education, I think – sitting with someone and just listening. Learning with empathy, led by someone you love. I’d forgotten how much that means to me, and what this might do to recentre my world.
We’re stronger when we speak. When we speak of struggle, of hope, of love.
So, I’m still thinking about consumerism. And about how to consume with compassion, with longevity, and care.
When I got back to London, Cam shared with me a video about consuming information more consciously, growing a digital garden of information we can grow, rather than be consumed by it. It was only then that I really thought about why I had left her house feeling so grateful. The weekend with them had given me hope, it had reminded me to centre myself around the things I love most in the world. My friends, and the art that we share that will always exist outside of the digital world that closes in on me. The digital is the most fragile form of record we’ve ever made, and now more than ever, we need to rethink the way we record and preserve our stories.
How can we share more consciously? Be better givers and receivers of knowledge?
Mostly, I want to know what makes you fizz. That feeling when interest tips into obsession, when you just have to know it all. Tell me what that is for you. Tell me what you love. And I’ll tell you mine.
LOVE MORE
The video about creating a digital garden is on youtube here; https://youtu.be/0tY7Z53QJo8?feature=shared
Thank you
lonely disco dancer 