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Early in the age of affluence (富裕) that followed World War II, an American
retailing analyst named Victor Lebow proclaimed, "Our enormously productive
economy...demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the
buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction,
our ego satisfaction, in consumption... .We need things consumed, burned up,
worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate."
Americans have responded to Lebow's call, and much of the world has
followed.
Consumption has become a central pillar of life in industrial lands and is
even embedded in social values. Opinion surveys in the world's two largest
economies—Japan and the United States—show consumerist definitions of success
becoming ever more prevalent.
Overconsumption by the world's fortunate is an environmental problem
unmatched in severity by anything but perhaps population growth. Their surging
exploitation of resources threatens to exhaust or unalterably spoil forests,
soils, water, air and climate.
Ironically, high consumption may be a mixed blessing in human terms, too.
The time-honored values of integrity of character, good work, friendship, family
and community have often been sacrificed in the rush to riches.
Thus many in the industrial lands have a sense that their world of plenty
is somehow hollow—that, misled by a consumerist culture, they have been
fruitlessly attempting to satisfy what are essentially social, psychological and
spiritual needs with material things.
Of course, the opposite of overconsumption—poverty—is no solution to either
environmental or human problems. It is infinitely worse for people and bad for
the natural world too. Dispossessed (被剥夺得一无所有的) peasants slash-and-burn their
way into the rain forests of Latin America, and hungry nomads (游牧民族) turn their
herds out onto fragile African grassland, reducing it to desert.
If environmental destruction results when people have either too little or
too much, we are left to wonder how much is enough. What level of consumption
can the earth support? When does having more cease to add noticeably to human
satisfaction? |
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发表于 2017-8-6 14:03:54