Apparently, considering whether to have a child while weighing the environmental implications of this decision preoccupied a significant number of young mothers some forty years ago. 35,000 young people joined Paul Erhlich’s activist group, Zero Population Group, after he persuaded them to limit their babies to 0, 1 or 2. Also in that decade, the birth control pill became more readily available. A news show on PBS covered this story just the other night and explored why contemporary environmentalists no longer mention the growing world population.
What’s becoming clearer the more I read and think about this issue is that simply controlling how many American children are born won’t be enough to turn around U.S. contributions to global warming. Because we use such a large percentage of the world’s resources, just limiting our numbers will not necessarily turn our consumption proclivities around—we’ve been trained too well to buy, discard, and buy again.
I’ve written before that this is just my journey; I’m not suggesting that what I decide is a good idea for anybody else. I don’t presume to urge people in the U.S.—or Africa, for that matter—to limit the size of their families. Clearly, this topic can be politicized very quickly. I’m focusing on my own questions about contributing to an ever-growing global population.
But I’m also thinking about how my lifestyle will affect environmental problems—whether I have a child or not.
For some time now I’ve been increasingly irritated by the media and the government’s habit of calling people who live in our country consumers. When, exactly, did we all lose the right to be called citizens, or something as respectful, instead of this new, irksome label?
In the early 15th century, to call someone a consumer was an insult. The label was applied to those who squandered and wasted what they owned. The term also implied that the consumer ended up with a net loss, as s/he used up goods or articles, unlike the 15th century meaning for the word producer: one who produces. Both appellations imply that a person is busy doing something. Unfortunately, the consumer has little to show for his or her efforts once the consuming is over.
Words are slippery devils, though, and the meaning of consumer changed as the needs of its century required. Sometime in the 1960’s, thanks to the efforts of Ralph Nader to protect consumers and John F. Kennedy’s Consumer Bill of Rights (see “The Modern Consumer: Overtaxed, Overwhelmed and Overdrawn” by Keith Brooks, www.yorku.ca/robarts/projects/gradpapers/.../Brooks_Modern_Consumer), the American consumer role grew in importance. Economists emphasized that only a growing economy could keep America prosperous. U.S. citizens were exhorted to spend the country into economic success—whether we needed all the stuff we were buying or not. Maybe the most disturbing example of consumerism came shortly after 9/11 when President Bush Jr. insisted we prove to the world with our continued shopping that the terrorists had not brought the U.S. economy to its knees. Rather than grieving and reflecting about what had happened on 9/11, Americans were urged to shop. This advice seems related to another concept dominating our national behavior these days: materialism, which Hawthorne defined in 1851 as “a way of life based entirely on consumer goods.” In 1748 materialism was understood as the philosophy that nothing exists except matter.
I am disturbed by contemporary notions of consumerism, pro-growth economics, and materialism. To return to an image from my first blog post, the glances passing between mother and child reveal something quite real, though materialism cannot measure them. Random acts of kindness are also not material, or quantifiable, though their effects on the giver and receiver are wonderfully real. Certainly we need air, water, food, lodging, livelihoods, to survive, but we are much more than these materialistic necessities.
Those living within a nation’s borders have had other names. In the 13th century we might have been called countrymen, a word Antony uses in Julius Caesar when addressing the crowds after Caesar’s assassination. Or citizen, a label popularized in the 14th century. Or patriot, a late 16th century term for fellow countrymen. All of these terms are intended to teach those living within a country that they are not alone and that their fates are inextricably linked to others who live with them.
We could also dispense entirely with nationalistic labels and simply call ourselves human beings, breaking down any man-made walls created by a country’s borders. Given the earth’s over-population reality, we may need to think globally about population and environmental challenges such as global warming. Businesses are busy creating a global economy. Human beings need to insist that environmental and population issues be added to the agenda—which does not mean that powerful nations tell others how to solve problems. What I’m trying to really understand as deeply as I can is that national borders cannot keep one country prosperous while others are suffering. If profit is global, the earth’s problems are global, too.
If Americans are to be thought of as consumers first because economic theorists and philosophers are convinced of the viability of materialism and pro-growth economics, I think human beings should have a clear understanding of the connections between these concepts. We live focused on material possessions not because that is the only way to live, but because we have absorbed current economic notions that urge us to drive the American economy with our shopping. I bet there are others beside myself who find these ideas only an inexact expression of what it means to be a citizen of the U.S.A.
So if I’m going to be a parent at all, I cannot hope to lessen an American child’s impact on global warming and other environmental problems until I get my own consumptive tendencies under control. And even if I succeed in reigning in my own consumer urges, I will be raising a child in a society replete with images and messages designed to awaken the young one’s greed. Advertising deregulation in the 1980’s has meant that the $100 million per year spent on child-focused ads has now skyrocketed to an incredible $17 billion per year. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7361/time_to_crackdown_on_child-focused_ads/.
Interesting related words to think about are consumptive, and consumption. Consumptive in the 15th century meant wasteful and was also linked to the disease tuberculosis. These definitions for the word extended right into the 19th century. Also linked to consumptive was the word, hectic, a word that English borrowed from the French ektik, which meant feverish, continuous, habitual, and consumptive. Consumption, then, is a disease. To be a consumer is to experience dis-ease: one is never satisfied and always yearns for more.
So I have new goals:
1. To limit (or choose not to?) have a child.
2. To substitute the term human being for consumer when labeling myself. What
I call myself affects my behavior.
3. Whether I have a child or not, to examine carefully how I choose to use the
amazing resources of this planet.
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