No satisfaction
No satisfaction
Posted 11:22pm (Mla time) Jan 25, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 26, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
VON Hernandez of Greenpeace Philippines, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2003, gave the best advice last week during the Karangalan forum at the CCP: Don't imitate American consumerism. "The American way of life, whose model of over-consumption is romanticized in these parts as the American dream, has been correctly characterized by the environmental movement as unsustainable. An American consumes 22 times more than the average citizen from the developing world. If we are to sustain such a wasteful lifestyle, the earth might not be able to sustain our needs for the next 50 years. If everyone were to live like an American, we would need to consume at least six planets in order to survive. Perhaps this is why Nasa and the US government were overjoyed with the prospect of life on Mars."
I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly how the audience reacted. I'm just taking it from our report, which said Hernandez's remarks drew chuckles. Well, his last remark is doubtless meant to raise chuckles. But the rest of it is perfectly serious, and absolutely sound.
The North, which contains a fourth of the earth's population, consumes two-thirds of the earth's resources, the United States above all. Much of the US expenditure goes to arms: $950 billion yearly. The entire world has been spending only $13 billion for health and nutrition. There and then, you see not just the problem with over-consumption but with the kind of priorities over-consumption takes. The expenditure for arms is directly related to the average American citizen consuming 22 times more than his counterpart in the developing world. It's the only way to keep that "way of life," as George W. Bush puts it, from being threatened.
What makes Hernandez's advice even sounder is that we have been emulating the American predilection for inordinate consumption, and quite typically have even gone past Americans in that respect. I remember some years ago being with a group of Filipinos in the United States who were comparing possessions with no particular attempt at subtlety. One of the things they talked about was clothes. To a man or woman, they wore signature ones, and debated furiously where the best bargains were to be had. I said I noticed Americans did not particularly care to wear generic jeans, or indeed drive banged-up cars. Someone put it to me bluntly: "Kailangan e. Me kulay ka na nga, di ka pa magpopostura. (You can't afford not to. You're colored, you have to look your best)." I didn't realize being brown and not wearing Sunday clothes on Monday constituted double jeopardy.
The same is true right here at home. Malls aren't just a place where you can find what you need, or where you can go to in summer to escape the heat (they've got air conditioners going full blast), they are a status symbol, particularly in provincial towns. The opening of an SM represents more than convenience, it represents the encroachment of civilization. The same fetish for signature items riots, of course. The brand names are to be found in shop after shop, and enjoy no small amount of patronage. I can almost hear the paraphrase: "Mahirap ka na nga, di ka pa poporma (You're already poor, and you don't improve your looks)?" Never mind not being able to sign your name, just wear signature.
It's probably the worst legacy American colonialism has bequeathed to us. Enough for you to ask heaven why we didn't fall, like India, to the British and get in exchange for being entombed in the mines an appreciation for civil service, the railroad system and books. Our concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness lies only in owning guns and buying things, including votes.
What our efforts to emulate American consumerism do at the very least is warp values. We define success as possession or accumulation and encourage bottomless appetites, which are the fountainhead of corruption. The late Judge Martin Ocampo was right: We can never obliterate corruption if we ourselves prefer to get as ninongs and ninangs in our weddings and baptisms not honest men and women who have only a wealth of wisdom to impart but ungodly crooks who have only a cache of loot to dangle. Barry Gutierrez is right as well: Why should anyone imagine he should feel deprived by going back to UP as an assistant professor rather than seeking a lucrative job in the United States at the end of a scholarship, when he is in fact choosing the life of the mind to the life of the mindless?
At the very most, that pursuit of happiness is really the pursuit of fool's gold, also called unsustainable growth. Why do we have to raze more forests and dig more holes in the mountains just so we can have more luxury cars, more TV sets and more signature jeans? You'd think that if we had to make such great sacrifices, we'd use whatever we earned to get more food, more books, more classrooms, more hospitals and clinics, more roads and bridges.
Every time I hear government call for belt-tightening, I laugh because we have such a strange concept of belt-tightening. If belt-tightening means giving up our desperate craving for more and more creature comforts, then that's something we should be doing not just during hard times but during normal ones. At the very least because we are not a rich country pretending to be poor, as a foolish lawmaker said ages ago, we are a poor country believing we are rich. At the very most because even if we were rich, we won't find happiness at the end of that pursuit. The only thing that brings fulfillment when pursued relentlessly is the quest for knowledge. It's the only thing that ought to be unquenchable in life. All the other pursuit brings is, well, Mick Jaggers says it best: "I can't get no satisfaction."
Posted 11:22pm (Mla time) Jan 25, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the January 26, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
VON Hernandez of Greenpeace Philippines, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2003, gave the best advice last week during the Karangalan forum at the CCP: Don't imitate American consumerism. "The American way of life, whose model of over-consumption is romanticized in these parts as the American dream, has been correctly characterized by the environmental movement as unsustainable. An American consumes 22 times more than the average citizen from the developing world. If we are to sustain such a wasteful lifestyle, the earth might not be able to sustain our needs for the next 50 years. If everyone were to live like an American, we would need to consume at least six planets in order to survive. Perhaps this is why Nasa and the US government were overjoyed with the prospect of life on Mars."
I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly how the audience reacted. I'm just taking it from our report, which said Hernandez's remarks drew chuckles. Well, his last remark is doubtless meant to raise chuckles. But the rest of it is perfectly serious, and absolutely sound.
The North, which contains a fourth of the earth's population, consumes two-thirds of the earth's resources, the United States above all. Much of the US expenditure goes to arms: $950 billion yearly. The entire world has been spending only $13 billion for health and nutrition. There and then, you see not just the problem with over-consumption but with the kind of priorities over-consumption takes. The expenditure for arms is directly related to the average American citizen consuming 22 times more than his counterpart in the developing world. It's the only way to keep that "way of life," as George W. Bush puts it, from being threatened.
What makes Hernandez's advice even sounder is that we have been emulating the American predilection for inordinate consumption, and quite typically have even gone past Americans in that respect. I remember some years ago being with a group of Filipinos in the United States who were comparing possessions with no particular attempt at subtlety. One of the things they talked about was clothes. To a man or woman, they wore signature ones, and debated furiously where the best bargains were to be had. I said I noticed Americans did not particularly care to wear generic jeans, or indeed drive banged-up cars. Someone put it to me bluntly: "Kailangan e. Me kulay ka na nga, di ka pa magpopostura. (You can't afford not to. You're colored, you have to look your best)." I didn't realize being brown and not wearing Sunday clothes on Monday constituted double jeopardy.
The same is true right here at home. Malls aren't just a place where you can find what you need, or where you can go to in summer to escape the heat (they've got air conditioners going full blast), they are a status symbol, particularly in provincial towns. The opening of an SM represents more than convenience, it represents the encroachment of civilization. The same fetish for signature items riots, of course. The brand names are to be found in shop after shop, and enjoy no small amount of patronage. I can almost hear the paraphrase: "Mahirap ka na nga, di ka pa poporma (You're already poor, and you don't improve your looks)?" Never mind not being able to sign your name, just wear signature.
It's probably the worst legacy American colonialism has bequeathed to us. Enough for you to ask heaven why we didn't fall, like India, to the British and get in exchange for being entombed in the mines an appreciation for civil service, the railroad system and books. Our concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness lies only in owning guns and buying things, including votes.
What our efforts to emulate American consumerism do at the very least is warp values. We define success as possession or accumulation and encourage bottomless appetites, which are the fountainhead of corruption. The late Judge Martin Ocampo was right: We can never obliterate corruption if we ourselves prefer to get as ninongs and ninangs in our weddings and baptisms not honest men and women who have only a wealth of wisdom to impart but ungodly crooks who have only a cache of loot to dangle. Barry Gutierrez is right as well: Why should anyone imagine he should feel deprived by going back to UP as an assistant professor rather than seeking a lucrative job in the United States at the end of a scholarship, when he is in fact choosing the life of the mind to the life of the mindless?
At the very most, that pursuit of happiness is really the pursuit of fool's gold, also called unsustainable growth. Why do we have to raze more forests and dig more holes in the mountains just so we can have more luxury cars, more TV sets and more signature jeans? You'd think that if we had to make such great sacrifices, we'd use whatever we earned to get more food, more books, more classrooms, more hospitals and clinics, more roads and bridges.
Every time I hear government call for belt-tightening, I laugh because we have such a strange concept of belt-tightening. If belt-tightening means giving up our desperate craving for more and more creature comforts, then that's something we should be doing not just during hard times but during normal ones. At the very least because we are not a rich country pretending to be poor, as a foolish lawmaker said ages ago, we are a poor country believing we are rich. At the very most because even if we were rich, we won't find happiness at the end of that pursuit. The only thing that brings fulfillment when pursued relentlessly is the quest for knowledge. It's the only thing that ought to be unquenchable in life. All the other pursuit brings is, well, Mick Jaggers says it best: "I can't get no satisfaction."
posted by Dante at 5:13 PM
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