Tag: consumption

I bet you have more possessions than this bloke

Posted on by philipdodson

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I posted this today on Facebook, about Rob Greenfield, who’s story I have been following.

He now has whittled all that he owns down to 111 things.

I love this. I am always saying about people and not things, and this demonstrates that all we really need in life can be fitted into a big backpack.

I’ve been as guilty as most in the world of buying more shit than I needed, so much so we even moved to a bigger house to cram more in.

Well, all over the world, all of our houses, lofts, garages, sheds and storage units are full to the brim. The landfills are full too with all the stuff we thought we needed.

Yet depression and loneliness are ever increasing.

We work all hours to earn the money to buy all this stuff, that we believe will enrich our lives and make us happy. It won’t.

Focus on people, activities and the memories that will create for you and the people who matter.

The rest of what we need in life, other than a backpack of 111 things, is love, kindness, empathy, compassion, and people who share our values.

This all lives in our minds and the minds of others, and unlike a backpack, it has no limit to what we can store.

What is work for?

Posted on by philipdodson

Philip Dodson Blog

I watched a TED by Seth Godin asking that very same question, only he was asking ‘what is school for?’ That got me thinking, what is work for?

This is perhaps a good thing to write about on the eve of going back to work for another week. Do we ever stop to ask that question? What is work for?

For most, it is simply an activity that they do in order to earn money. Then that money is used to buy stuff. Most of us have been prepared to do exactly that for the rest of our adult lives by school.

We have been trained to comply and be good workers in the mechanised, sanitised and industrial world.

We’ve been sold the dream that if we work hard, we’ll get more money, we’ll be able to get a bigger house, which we can use the bigger income, to fill with more worthless trinkets.

Most of those trinkets lose their shine and end up in a skip. We are encouraged to constantly replace our trinkets, with updated more ‘fashionable’ items, even if the trinkets are still perfectly usable.

So work is for the benefit, mainly, of the owners of work and not us. We are merely fodder to keep the system working.

Surely there is something more meaningful for human kind to be doing each day than simply working to consume stuff that benefits just a few.

Surely it is better to be creating something that enhances human kind? Surely it is better to be caring for one another? Surely it is better to be creating our own stuff and not simply working to line the pockets of a few.

Anyone for work? or perhaps we’d all be better off working in collaboration in communities creating our own individual stuff to share with each other?