An Invisible Chain of our Time
Page 28
like, and not worry about nothing, explore, all this became a common occurrence, it was rare that someone does not have access to it. The word adventure ceased to have its original sense, you could go anywhere in the world, bathing in a pool, and have a beer with caged animals in the tourist park near you. That is the color and tone of our consumption. That was our dream, that of Westerners. We thought it was possible by our intelligence: we never have suspected it was a consequence of our predatory behavior, our voracious greed turned on business object.
Has been sometime reckoned the value of this spend of resources, the debit generated by all this, the amount of resources that have been left hanging by the road, abandoned, the value of all that has aged before being monetized, without even including the environmental value of it? This never has been, nor the least. One part that supports this huge consumption is the world of home and personal stuff. The numbers become terrifying, hallucinogens, could not make sense in a science fiction movie, but we live with them quite naturally. Please do not be alarmed with the numbers that I am giving, but they are real and have been verified in the area of developed countries. These numbers on average envelop your home or your personal life by 60%; the rest explains the variation between different sites.
In an average Western home, or in urban households in countries of high development, there is an average of 7,800 objects, while a mid-level home reaches the 4,500. The value of these objects (home included) varies between $0,45 and $2,4 millions. In the life cycle of a home developed, counted 25 years, the value reached by purchased or embedded objects is $187,000, and its loss in value is an 84%. It has an explanation, for each field of consumption.
The furnishings have become a kind of signal, a skin, a show of power, and a way to say that all goes well for us. Thereby, must be renewed according to the style prevailing and is expected to have successful people. Thus, furniture (8 out of 10) is on average changed after a period on the range of 3-5 years.
The appliances are a tribe of objects vying for attention without actually being doing anything important. There are not so many needs in the life of a human being to need to live many objects around simply doing "something". The total average number of current appliances offered for purchase cannot be exactly calculated: only an estimation from the number of patents, brands, categories and companies, has allowed a real approximation on the order of 4,000,000 different stuff clearly on the market (a pool of stuff, but not all, the whole is many fold bigger). The average number you can have around yourself on sale is 153,000. Sure you will ask how is possible estimate it. It took me almost two months investigate across the WTO, sectorial organizations, web companies, reports, and consumer associations; and after all it, contrast in numerous data-sheets the non duplication of the same data, and bring a real value on the bottom if possible. It was impressive, I never could believe this I learnt, but is not hidden and is very visible. I should clarify that I not intend to sell this information, is not my purpose. Anyway, it needs a stronger work in order to make it usable.
Hygiene (where feminine products are the bigger response existing) is a safe business: the average number of things for hygiene in a bathroom reaches the 350 stuffs, and you could not find one bath with less than 80. Your skin, your hair, your hands, your beauty, actually could be using only 14 different substances, that truly need in the worse of cases. And concentration for doses, creams, soaps or jellies, is three to five times that necessary for its proper application, besides being a completely unnecessary consumption. But if you do not see something dense, you think it is not effective. The worst, you do not know that, the most of times you are applying over your skin a perfect food for bacteria, the ideal bed for them. And even you are avoiding the light from sun could come to you, weakening slowly your whole health. Is better do not talk about babies: nobody will doubt never no one word, no one product, no one improvement, if are for the babies, must be good.
Actually, vitamins, herbs, are not a “better” or a miraculous repairing in your life. Vitamins are naturally in food (unless that food is not food), sunlight or when body runs well create and activate some of them. The natural way to obtain this is already established by Nature. When you cannot achieve it naturally, you can improve the absorption, achieve the help of compound treatments, as well as it was discovered time ago by the chemical companies that herbs can do. No one herb on the world is an enemy, it bad use only is. But miraculous processes, five shots, two weeks, three doses, four boxes, they promise that you can continue to live just as bad, but correct something with such ease, are nothing more than a gross sale designed in very simple way, allowing companies reach anyone.
No subtle marketing idea has been as smart as this: somehow, ¡you can auto diagnose, you can treat yourself! Somehow, also you can feel on the Nature taking some herbs. Please, like you need to take some herbal, sure you need to act and live again with more sense, and that is not sold in a gym or in a box, or in a medical consultation. More yet, do not be naive, companies spend money in reach beautiful colors, smells, and a perfect touch for every stuff. That pale pink is so pretty! The better touch is the one of your mate, not the cream. And herbs have been and are good tool for health, when needed, not everyday for everything in every time. Probably will come new lines of “helpers for your health” that will be named as Bio-2-Self-Young.
The world of games is a sample of how some companies make business. You will say quickly... ¡But there is a lot of people who is living thank to game business! Yes, as it is in other fields, that could be right. But say that "we need altogether to play games at least 21 billion hours weekly in order to solve the urgent problems of the planet, not only the poor billion hours currently we spend gaming,” is a ridiculous statement, more so, is a sad statement said by clever persons like designers or chairmen from games companies! Do you will say it to Sazza Tiboulé, 3 years old, 3 years starving, who even do not know any vaccine? During this gorgeous weekly time, what do they go to eat? Terrible world, so different issues in different minds at the same time: only humans are capable to do it (say and say again) and later going dinner brimming satisfaction.
The cars are a fantastic world: on average, a car is changed every three years, and have achieved 12 different models, each of which progressively leads appliances inside as these ones of home, being able to do something more advanced technologically. And not being necessary or advisable to move at 80 m/h, the engines are made to go either 100, 120 or 140 m/h. So, it is not surprising you do not like walking, that this will recommended by your doctor.
The last specialist in getting a “high” that has appeared is the phone. The IT companies are truly skillful coaxing people. The wonderful change from fixed to wireless telephony, has managed not only the freedom to communicate, but the duty to pay an annual rent to a millionaire of people, roughly 6 billion lines, 6 billion people paying for ... What need suddenly, desperately so many people say at once? The Internet was built as an open communication system between computers, never closed: the data come and go, your data also, the most important data, data from real folks, real consumers. That is what you are actually giving off, your data, your likes, your economic capabilities, and the deep of your purse. And you pay every month for it religiously as a lover, really fallen in love with mobiles.
You are telling to someone you do not know where is, each time you touch the Enter, each time you pay, each time you press the phone, all the ways you could end be a customer.
Where is the difference, what more does, where is elsewhere?
A new product needs than the previous one is despised, and that is the work for designers and advertisers. Then, this new hit could be liked. How many times do you use your things? How much money do you spend every month for every thing? Please, be careful and do not calculate quickly for all those things, you could have a heart stroke, or two. Between 7,000 million inhabitants, sure there are geniuses of the sale, can sell sand in the desert and persuade you to buy water bottles for the camels, sell ice in An
tarctica, or shade in the Amazon.
Now, I am going to replace the chair of the soothsayers: in the future, you will be completely depending upon drugs of design, protecting you from everything, eating things you do not know now, avoiding contact with anything that is not tested previously, and most likely, you will buy purified air for your home, which is already a fact.
12. From the caves... to the crowding in lighted caves.
The dictatorship of goods
The person who lives in a little city or village thinks that he or her will never be affected by some troubles that happen far away. Life is not so, everything is being connected now -globalization, I guess do you remember-, and if expenses grow there away, here something will end being more expensive each day.
Have you sailed along the Pacific, and clashed against dirty rugs of debris? It is also a spectacle. It is a parade of all sorts of stuffs. Do not worry if you did not have the opportunity to see the phenomenon; you will see it the next years near you, as rather usual event. The increasing of waste follows being big, enough to achieve to cover the 20% of seas in hardly