Buy Nothing Day
29th November 2008
The Apocalyptic Version
Suddenly, we ran out of money and, to avoid collapse, we quickly pumped liquidity back into the system. But behind our financial crisis a much more ominous crisis looms: we are running out of nature… fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, soil. What are we going to do when supplies of these vital resources run low?
There’s only one way to avoid the collapse of this human experiment of ours on Planet Earth: we have to consume less.
It will take a massive mindshift. You can start the ball rolling by buying nothing on November 29th. Then celebrate Christmas differently this year, and make a New Year’s resolution to change your lifestyle in 2009.
It’s now or never!
The Indonesian Version
Let's go to the shopping mall today, as usual. It's nice and cool in there and we can have fun going up and down the escalators and lifts. We might even see something we'd like to buy, but know we can't afford.
We haven't got much money, and we'll probably lose our jobs soon as 'developed' countries have less need of our natural resources, our fish, forests, fresh water, minerals, and cheap labour.
There's not much we can do about it, although we can charge those expats who like drinking whisky and wine and eating non-foreign food loads more money so we can get by a bit easier, and they have to make do with tempeh like us.
We'd sooner go to a park and breath some fresh air, but we've been told by successive Jakarta Governors that we like to go to malls for recreation.
So I suppose we do.
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I missed last year's Buy Nothing Day (but wrote about it here) and maybe most of us will miss this year's. That could be because the local website, linked to from the very dynamic UK site, only has info about last year's day.
Which I missed.
Ho hum.
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A Tragic Footnote
Friday, not Saturday, was the Buy Nothing Day in the USA. It is set then to 'celebrate' the traditional 'Black Friday' sale.
News comes of a Wal-Mart worker trampled to death after a 2,000-strong sale crowd forced the store doors open too early.
