Buy Nothing Day

Buy Nothing Day, having originated in Vancouver Canada is a celebration that draws attention to the effects of over-consumption and encourages people to acknowledge the effects it has on the environment and the exploitation of Third World countries that is done in the process of consumerism. In order to participate on November 27th in buy nothing day you must not only stop buying for 24 hours but shut off your television, lights and other non-essential appliances.

Its purpose is to not only express the global issues of the environment and capitalism but to give people realization of the effect consumerism and purchasing tendencies have on each and every one of us each and every day. It’s almost like a period of enlightenment or an epiphany where millions of us come to the realization of how our over consumerism effects us every day. It emphasizes how less consumerism can lead to less stress and a healthier lifestyle for people living in Industrial countries, ultimately in the Western world consumerism is the most powerful addiction being a strong backbone of both the Canadian and American economy.

I was in fifteen when I got my first part-time job, and as soon as I got my first pay check as a consumer-minded teenager my first instinct was to spend as much money as I could on clothes, CD’s, food and accessories. I soon realized that this consumerism in me captivated a new identity that millions of people try to buy into from a flashy car, to the hottest phone to a new outfit, brand names and consumerism forge new characters in all of us and personify how we feel about ourselves. Scott Mccloud writes that for many of us, objects and tools are extensions of who we are and how people perceive us. “Our Identities and awareness are invested in many inanimate objects every day. Our clothes for example can trigger numerous transformations in the way others see us and in the way we see ourselves.”(Mccloud 38). Scott Mccloud felt that our identities and perspectives were extended through the usage of comics, clothing, tools and everyday appliances. That in this age we are not simply human beings but have come to be extensions of reality with such inanimate objects. In western culture, the definition of oneself is based purely on such extensions as the coffee we drink, the clothes we wear, the music we listen to or the car we drive. We have developed a very shallow culture of individuals who only skim the surface when passing judgement or making conclusions and Buy Nothing Day has brought awareness to that. On Novemebr 27th, for everyone who participates, it will be a day where no individual is better or lesser then another but only equal and millions will see the world in a whole new outlook and with a whole new beginning.

Works Cited

"Adbusters." www.adbusters.com. 23/11/2009. Adbusters Media Foundation, Web. 23 Nov 2009. .

-Mccloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. 2nd ed. New York, NY, U.S.A: Harper Perennial, 1994. (38). Print.