In the midst of the Carnivalesque Rebellion Week, on Buy Nothing Day, Lyn and I continue our celebration of the spirit of rebellion.
For so many people life has become a race to accumulate flashier, shinier things. Things too often made from non-renewable resources, by people working without basic worker protections or adequate pay, and paid for through debt, accruing interest to the financiers, which has to be earned by serving one's corporate master. This service is often unfulfilling, and unbefitting an intelligent and creative human being. All too often, a person who feels this dissatisfaction tries to assuage the emptiness with ever flashier, shinier things.
Even as Oregon continues to have double digit unemployment, those that are working continue the hamster wheel syndrome, and those that aren't are still seduced by the call of those shiny consumer goods... come on, all the cool kids have one.... All too often, people fall into despair, feeling a lack of self-worth, when they aren’t able to keep up with these manufactured desires, and identities become co-mingled with what job you hold, or don’t.
A human being's natural habitat is not a cubby nor a mall.
Buy Nothing Day is all about focusing on breaking free from this cycle of consumer addiction. The Carnivalesque Rebellion Week is an international happening to call for reclamation of our lives, a new way of organizing our economies, our communities.
What happens when we start to become ourselves?
Adbusters is a global network of activists, creatives and culture jammers working to change the way information flows, and meaning is produced in our society.
Everyone can be a culture jammer. During the week of Carnivalesque Rebellion, jammers are encouraged to find one another, in communities and around the world to share ideas and inspire one another to create a spectacle, and to have fun while doing it.
Culture jamming is a joyous declaration of independance from our corporate rulers, and Buy Nothing Day is a focal point for the movement. Let's take advantage of this reminder to reclaim our lives as free beings, who are creative enough to rebuild an sustainable egalitarian society, based on the principles of compassion, truth, and beauty, from the ashes of the old.