Our disposable dystopia

Our world solution to dispose, discard, destroy is dangerous. We have elected to celebrate the new, the young, and the innovative, and it will result in humanity’s demise. Consumerism has led us to embrace a disposable mindset that has seeped into all areas of our existence.

We have to assess and adjust.

Let’s consider throw away cameras and throw away snapshots. Each time one of my photography customers eschews prints and albums for those cherished downloads, I cringe. Those downloads may not be accessible the next time technology shifts — and all those memories will be lost on a thumb drive. When I introduce the customer to archival prints and keepsakes — which will last 100 years and pass through generations — the response is a frown and a question: Why would I want that?

Because you don’t care. You swipe. You take another thousand selfies. You can’t even find that special image on your device because you have added thousands — thousands more. Instead of cherishing that one image, you make new ones. Which must be better because somehow, at some point, the definition of improved became new. Valuable is also defined as cutting-edge, new, newfangled.

Just because something is new does not make it better. Does not mean it has worth. Does not mean it should be cherished. But we have forgotten the concept of value in permanence and disposed of those ideals.

As of last year, almost four billion earthlings belong to this consumer class: eating highly processed food, buying bigger houses, buying a new car every two years. Like Agent Smith opines in The Matrix:

“Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply. You multiply until every natural resource is consumed. And the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease. A cancer of this planet. You are a plague.”

We don’t darn our socks. We buy a package of four new pairs from Amazocrap. We use up our clothing like we use soap or makeup. Remember when your shoes lasted for years? Years. You’d buy a pair of boots and wear them for six or more seasons. Now? You’re lucky if those boots last one winter. Remember resoling your shoes? I do. I still do it. Well, did it. Last year, I found my cobbler went out of business. A shoe store replaced his spot at the mall. Great.

We get a new phone every season. The cell companies ensure our new gadget won’t work with the next 5 or 6G update. My family’s refrigerator when I was growing up was still going after twenty years. My new fridge? Died after three. Right around the time the warranty ran out. Go figure. Cars are in a similar evolution. Disposable manufacturing was the key to profitability. What company wants to create something that lasts a lifetime? No profit in that. So, let’s make cars and appliances, cellphones and computers, building materials and clothing, wear out, wear down, break. The only manner to make a product become consumable, like food or toilet paper, is to manufacture it to fail.

Maintenance shops are a dime a dozen. Where do you get your blender or television repaired? You don’t. You buy a new one. And we fail to recognize the amount of energy and resources it takes to make a new product. And we fail to recognize the harm to our environment.

And our souls.

No one bakes bread anymore. We microwave and fast-food ourselves into obesity. We order prepackaged meals. We dine at convenience stores. Recently, for a family gathering, one woman charged with bringing a dish to share posted a packet of quick-taco seasoning. Just add ground beef! She was thrilled the packet was gluten-free. I suggested I would bring cumin, cilantro, and chilis from my garden instead of the packet. The response to my suggestion was laughter. Who has time for all of that?

We allow big business to control our food production — creating infertile seeds (terminator seeds) so the farmer cannot reseed his or her fields. He or she needs to buy more seed for each planting season. So few cultivate a home garden. We even have laws preventing producing food to sell to others. We prefer the corporate product. The product that does not last two seasons, never mind a generation.

And what about our food quality? How many times do you buy produce at the market and find it does not last but a day or two? Why is that? I remember my parents buying bushels of corn, bags of apples, six bunches of bananas. They would ripen on the counter and last weeks. Not anymore. Produce from the market spoils quickly because it might be a year oldwhen you purchase it — the result of controlled atmosphere storage — and other chemical methods — to keep produce fresh until the market demands it. A little chlorine wash will make your carrots nice and fresh so they can go bad in your fridge a few days after you buy them.

But no problem! You can get another bag of carrots easily! Just throw the bad ones away.

Throw it all away.

But with our devotion to consumerism comes a higher cost than a bag of carrots.

Art

We seek the next series to binge and the next restaurant to visit. Reruns are a travesty. Old movies — nevermind anything in black and white — are to be discarded. If it’s old, it must be bad, unworthy. We need something new, bright, shiny — with CGI and explosions to impress us.

We celebrate street artists as if they have added something besides visual pollution to our world. Are you seriously going to compare some spray-paint fanatic to Rembrandt? Stop it. Street art is to be printed poster-sized and thrown away when the new guy shows up on the scene. No one — ever — is throwing away a Dali or O’Keeffe or Van Gogh original.

Why do we fail to appreciate the difference?

Please explain to me how today’s electronic and computerized music can compare with big band music, blue guitar, jazz riffs, and the talent of true musicianship? With the complexity and artistry of a symphony?

I can hear you. You are chuckling at the old lady. So yesterday. So cheugy.

Jobs and Careers

We no longer sink into careers or roles as we job hop endlessly. Who do you know has a retirement plan with their first employer? We move our 401ks like hot potatoes. Oh, let’s get another certificate, another degree, start another career because the first one was not to one’s liking. The employer was too demanding. The job didn’t pay enough. Wasn’t good enough.

Millennials believe it’s career suicide to stay at any job for more than two to three years. Less than 13% of employees are willing to work hard and do a job to the best of his or her ability. Because why? Because the next job is an email away.

And employers are just as guilty. Workers are disposable. Companies merely calculate the cost of hiring, training, and on-boarding a new employee at the lower starting salary and determine Miss Been There Five Years can be replaced. Look at the cost savings! And Miss Been There Five Years was probably going out on maternity leave soon — so they dodged that bullet!

No investment in individuals. No mentoring or grooming or guiding. One body in the cubicle is as good as another — and cheaper is always better.

Relationships

We divorce the minute it gets tough. It’s acceptable. It’s almost, shall I say, expected. Cosmopolitan. He divorces her because she got fat. She divorced him because he got lazy. He divorces her because she was depressed all the time. He drinks. A prettier alternative works at the golf club. She looked through the dating sites and realized she could find a higher-earning husband.

What the hell are we doing? Marriage takes work. Relationships take commitment. And I’m no saint on this one, I’ll admit. But I divorced grudgingly after trying for years to heal the relationship. Many friends and acquaintances file those papers at the first sign of trouble. It’s just so easy to say goodbye and try again. And so many dating sites. Why not go shopping?

And it’s not just intimate partnerships that are disposable. We dump friends for the slightest transgression. We can find a new tribe on Meetup. How many people I know do not speak with their kids? Sons that dump parents because of one argument. Sisters that won’t speak to each other because of one uncomfortable holiday dinner.

Compassion and compromise are too much work. Just toss that friend, sibling, that parent, that spouse — plenty of other people to fill that space.

We can’t even find the energy to nurture business relationships. We throw away investment advisors, lawyers, doctors, accountants, dentists, and mechanics. Because there’s a better one down the street. And what’s the harm? We patronize a business for years — but that one time they don’t have what we need or the clerk is rude; we go to another business. Loyalty is archaic. It’s perverse. Loyalty is weakness. Tolerating less than new and fresh and perfect is against our fragile egos. We celebrate moving on.

Community

Our neighbors are unfriendly. Or they paint their house the wrong color. The area attracts a criminal element or drug dealers. The schools are failing. The town counsel is corrupt. So, do we stay and help and fix and build community? Nope. We move. We fly to another neighborhood where the good people live. Where the schools are better funded. Where there are noise ordinances and better parking.

We don’t try to improve anything. We just move on.

Youth Culture

We celebrate youth like it’s the best time of life. Come on. How can the time of growth and struggle and confusion — of thinking Tide Pods are food — be the best time in life?

We toss experienced employees as too old. As not forward thinking. Ineffective. Ancient. Useless. Can’t move with the times. As a professor, I have watched the higher-education industry force older professors into retirement. Hey, they couldn’t figure out Zoom during the lockdown, so send ’em packing. They are useless, washed up, and don’t know the new pronouns.

We celebrate tweens and discard grandma. Tradition is a dirty word. Wisdom means ignorant. History must be rewritten. Gray hair and wrinkles mean ugly. We’ve gotten to where millions of people choose plastic surgeryto graceful aging.

I don’t know about you, but I never learned a damn thing from a teenager. Zip. No teenager is saving the world no matter the hype the media sells. I am not arguing that children and teens have invaluable opinions or outlooks or ideas. Brilliance can come from anyone. But twenty years of experience does not have the same value as sixty years of experience. The best lessons I ever heard were from my grandmother and father. Old people. You know, people who had lived life. Who had suffered and struggled and succeeded?

I watch the social media feeds with these messed up kids giving advice. It’s amusing. What hubris allows a kid to tell anyone how to succeed in life? Students who I have watched grow into adulthood — with families and careers — have changed. They’ve learned. They are experienced. And now they have messages worth listening to.

But we have internalized disposing of anything that is not new. Old equals obsolescence.

And often, new is not as valuable.

Mentality

We swipe up and down, right and left. Reels last minutes. And we accept it. Our children — and our adults — are losing the ability to focus for long periods of time because they live in a disposable, consumer-driven world. Our attention spans have shortened from twelve to five minutes. In fact, one study discovered college students can only focus for about a minute. Perhaps our ADHD crisis is not genetic or internal but a result of the practices we have adopted? We have evidence that the rise of tech devices has a strong correlation with the increase in suicide attempts, depression, and anxiety.

This switch-cost effect, where the brain has to reconfigure each time we switch from one social media item or email or task to the next, is a version of our throwaway world. We throw away the item of our attention for the next and the next. We have created cognitive degradation for new, next, new.

Are You Still Here? I Doubt It

I’ve judged you. I hope I’m wrong and that you are still reading. But you probably found something else to read. A new thing. My article was too long, too much. The same subject all the way through.

And just as I judged you, history will judge us.

Instead of responsible behavior, instead of minimizing risk and teaching responsibility, we teach and embrace throwing away problems. You don’t like your job? Quit. You’re sick of your spouse? File for divorce. You don’t like your community? Move. Don’t try to fix anything. Don’t try at all. Just throw it away. Because we can get another, make another, find another. New, new, next, more.

Move on, move forward. New tech. New styles. New sounds.

We have the technology. Oh, we humans are smart. We can do anything. Except value that which has true worth.

It’s not as if we didn’t see this coming. Plato saw it. He called this consumer culture the “democratic soul.” Our throw away society is not just harming our environment. It’s not merely harming our economy.

I write this knowing many of you feel the same. I write this knowing, because it’s digital, it will disappear and be replaced with another piece of writing. Or maybe some archeologist will find it in a thousand years and nod and note how sad.

But it won’t be an earthling archeologist. Because we are throwing ourselves away.