the treadmills
According to the treadmill logic individuals and corporations run in place at a faster and faster pace in an effort to keep up in the increasingly globalized game of competition. Both treadmills have a huge appetite for natural resources.
There is an output bias in our systems of production (Schnaiberg). An output bias means we see what comes out, but not what goes in.
Ag-gag Laws
As an example of an output bias in our system of production: How many of us eat meat? Or, consume dairy products? Have we ever been to a factory that produces meat? Chances are good that we have not, because the public is not allowed into these spaces. In fact, often employees are not even allowed to report animal abuses in industrial farming because of ag-gag laws. This is an example of an output bias in our system of production.
The "ad industry" attracts buyers by invoking a love of nature. Oftentimes, animals are show by a red barn or out in open fields on the products we buy and yet, the actual production lines produce products that are not good for nature. There are many paradoxes like this one in our systems of production. For example, nature is often in the background in the fantasy car commercials. The underlying message is if we buy an expensive product, we are going to get closer to nature. Yet, often, the more expensive products cause more harm to nature in order to be processed.
we are linked
commodity chains
If we follow the invisible strings of our phone, or the computer, or any of our commodities, the strings will trace back to many human hands and also the raw earth. All of our products will are derived from the earth.
There are real social, political, medical, environmental costs to ignoring these production processes.
"A commodity chain is a process used by firms to gather resources, transform them into goods or commodities and, finally, distribute them to consumers. It is a series of links connecting the many places of production and distribution and resulting in a commodity that is then exchanged on the world market. In short, it is the connected path from which a good travels from producers to consumers." -google
Electronic waste, e-waste, e-scrap, or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) "describes loosely discarded, surplus, obsolete, or broken electrical or electronic devices. Informal processing of electronic waste in developing countries causes serious health and pollution problems. Some electronic scrap components, such as CRTs, contain contaminants such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, mercury, and brominated flame retardants," which are considered toxins for humans. Source: http://www.decommissioneddownstream.com/what_is_ewaste.html
Western countries have been dumping their electronic waste to Asian and African countries for decades despite some rules and regulations which supposedly forbade them from doing so.
The pay is low and there is not protection for their bodies, they do it because they don’t have other good options. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
Guiyu in China’s Guangdong Province is the world’s largest electronic waste site, with an estimated 80% of its 150,000 population (+200k migrant workers) working in the e-waste processing business, often with primitive and hazardous methods – which has led to severe pollution and health problems to the township. Source: http://yeinjee.com/guiyu-electronic-waste-town-china/
Along with obsolete equipments come the logic that throwing away things is necessary and even pleasing.
Why are humans so good at consuming products? What motivates to buy and replenish our goods?
consumerism
Advertisers often try to help us construct our identities. For example, advertisements constantly offer us newer, more “cutting edge” products. And, when we purchase new products, we often experience a "halo effect" around our purchase. Have you all ever bought something new and felt "better" because of it? Think about a purchase you have made, something you really desired. How did you feel afterwards? The concept of "halo effect" refers to these "good" feelings we have after we get or buy something new.
Unfortunately, the "halo effect" is short-lived and often disappears nearly as soon as we possess an item. Then, our attention moves to a new object... or, something else we are lacking.
Planned obsolescence, Perceived Obsolescence and Technological Somnambulism
Planned obsolescence: designing and producing products in order for them to be used up (obsolete) within a specific time period. Source: https://www.mymoneyblog.com/planned-vs-perceived-obsolescence.html#:~:text=Planned%20obsolescence%3A%20designing%20and%20producing,within%20a%20specific%20time%20period.&text=Fashion%20is%20all%20about%20perceived,product%E2%80%9D%20of%20the%20advertising%20industry.
Perceived obsolescence refers to a situation where a customer believes they need an updated version of a product even though theirs is working just fine. ... Examples of perceived obsolescence include getting you to buy the latest car, smartphone or fashion.and it could be said that perceived obsolescence is the number one “product” of the advertising industry. Source: https://technologystudent.com/prddes1/plannedob2.html
Technological Somnambulism is the tendency to unquestionably accept the use of and spread of new technologies. How many of us have had jobs where new technologies were put into place that didn’t make sense? Or maybe you’ve acquired new versions of software or technology that doesn’t seem to be better.
Sum-nam-bu-lism (derived from sleepwalking)
technology and freedom
The promise of this commercial is that the computer will give us personal freedom and keep us safe from "Big Brother."
Have the use of computers and the internet led to the end of top-down authority? Have we witnessed a rise in democratic freedom? Have we see community collaboration on a never before seen scale?
We are intently fixed on our screen for long periods. Maybe our eyes hurt? We may stay in sedentary, hunched over postures. We may be on the computer at work, school, and at home. We may spend more time with our technologies than our best friends and families. Our actions on the screens are shaping nature, in terms of our bodies, even as we may actually ignore these signals. We may ignore nature.
Environmental Sociologists ask what constraints come with this access? We have seen an increase in spyware, gps tracking, our private images become part of the public domain, there are now deepfakes, and we have censored and/or restricted access to certain information.
We also see increased disembedding or separation from our natural environments. Time and space are rearranged to “connect presence and absence”. Disembedding refers to when social relations are “lifted out” of their local contexts and restructured across time and space.
We also experience distanciation where relating to people and places at a distance becomes normal and expected (Giddens). How have these phenomenon increased during the Covid pandemic?
Speed is highly valued. We want faster internet, increased bandwidth, higher speed limits. The speed can increases the sense of absence from the local environment.
But where are the strings? Our local places become harder to know, understand and lay claim to as we are become reshaped by distant global influences. There is also invisible radiation and other toxic pollution related to the production of our screens and they influence us whether we see them or not.
Technology may make it seem like information is free...yet it is not. Did you know most academic and scientific articles are behind university network firewalls? Read below about Aaron Swartz. Swartz believed in open access and created programs to download peer-reviewed journals, like the kinds academics and scientists author, to make them accessible to people who were not affiliated with the university.
Four + problems of consumerism
Juliet Schor
- The inability to trade our productivity for leisure time. Free time is hard to come by! The market cannibalizes important realms of social life=the market eats time. There are very strong demands on labor from the market economy. The output bias of capitalism relating to labor makes employee pay a huge penalty for the “privilege” of working shorter hours. Example penalties include: less benefits, less pay, little to no room for promotion. In sum, we have big trade-off between income and leisure.
- The Impact of Consumer Activity on Planetary Ecology. Our consumerism causes: climate destablization, species extinction, ecosystem degradation, and toxic chemical poisoning of the planet and people. All of these impacts increase as populations get more and more access to previously "elite" items, such as technology, vehicles, large houses, more appliances, different types of meat and travel.
- All private consumption is a substitute for an alternative use of economic resources. Instead of private consumption we could have better public benefits.
- Hard to have community. Consumerism as a substitute for community. People trapped in the cycle of work and spend, and have lless time to be connected with others.
the institutionalization of environmental harm
The output bias in our commodity chains help us to be disconnected from the source of the products we use and consume. The system of treadmills requires that are separated from the people and places that are the sources for our products. After all, we do not keep our trash with us. If we were holding all our trash or all the trash that is accumulated making our products or if we were in contact with the people who were harmed in order to bring our products to us, the system would not work as well. It relies on our ignorance.
- We don’t see the earth as alive. It is a receptacle for our waste.
- There is no accountability. We can leave it behind, and we are anonymous when we do it.
- We assume the impacts of our actions on the planet and others are fairly trivial. That somehow all of this...It doesn’t matter!!
These thought processes are encouraged by social patterns. In the image above we can see how the car separates us. What is the average replacement time of a car? 3 years. Cars are a marker of status, we see them as a better option than public transportation. We see the earth as our highway. We control nature and we can ignore it. Do these thoughts align more with NEP or HEP?
What happens if we try to step off the interconnected treadmills of consumption and production?
We become the true outsider and/or social deviant (Bauman). Our society demands that we ignore the inputs into our commodities and it relies on us consuming materials for economic gains.
Fossil fuel scarcity and climate destabilization are reminders of ecological actualities that we cannot continue to outrun. The road is getting slippery and we could benefit if we slowed down, and took a look at our actions and our connections to the environment.
Environmental Sociology is a barking dog that reminds us that we are dialoging with the environment, whether we think about it or not. And, our social structures are blocking our views. If we accept the invitation from Environmental Sociology, we will be connecting the invisible strings that link our hands with the things we throw away to see where they land, questioning our relationships of power and desire and looking towards a better design for socio-ecological relationships.
Credits:
Created with images by Comfreak - "end of the world nature armageddon" • franzl34 - "cows livestock cattle feed" • secomp - "meat butcher store" • VirajTamakuwala - "doom earth end" • Inner_Vision - "nikola tesla electricity" • Markus Spiske - "untitled image" • Debora Bacheschi - "untitled image" • giogio55 - "sea oats garbage" • skeeze - "running runner long distance"