Check out these pics. I’m sitting in the Fair Trade Cafe in Glebe and I got talking to a German photographer. She’s showing me her photos from New York. It’s cool to see how she’s taken other people’s art (buildings, signs etc) and made them her own artworks through composition. It’s cool to think about people using the world as their canvas - creating buildings, signs, parks etc - must be satisfying to create art that people live in, experience and appreciate.

Postsecret has been around for ages. Every now and then, someone will send me a link to it. It’s a site that speaks to people. Two friends emailed me the link in the past week, so I thought it was about time I mentioned it here. Check it out.

Got an email from Dan Ilic today letting me know about a viral campaign featured on spinwall. I hadn’t heard of the site, but it seems like a good place to get a wrap up of the pop-culture scene in a few clicks. This site definitely goes best with tabbed browsing, because there are so many stories you’ll want to click on, you can set your tabs up and read away…

Affluenza: When too much is never enough has been written by Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute. Following the book’s launch, they spoke at Gleebooks on June 7, 2005.

They spoke to a packed house, with standing room only. I scratched notes as I listened and you will find these below. Some are direct quotes from Hamilton / Denniss, a few are just thoughts that I scratched as I listened.

The notes highlight some of the ideas Affluenza explores.

MARKETING CULTURE:

The function of at $7k bbq is to drive up desire… $300 bbq’s stop looking good. Now bbqs are selling for $2-3k…

Most Australians have doubts about a money driven life. 83% have criticised a ‘decline in values’.

Now we are bombarded with promotions for things that no-one even knew we needed 10 years ago.

Mobile phones, PC, plasma TV , private health and education, third bathrooms… These were not considered essential items in Australia 20 years ago.

Many of us have a failure to distinguish between want and need.

Some of the best-paid psychologists work in marketing. Much of their work:

• Creates and project new insecuirities
• Implies that happiness is only a purchase away

Are a portion of Australians shopaholics? Gambling and alcohol consumption can become obsessive - what about shopping?

AUSTRALIA’S SELF PERCEPTION:

We’re defining ourselves by the products we’re going without.

BBQ’s used to provide a wonderful snapshot of Australian egalaterianism: where people gather to share in food and conversation. Now it’s about “outdoor kitchens” and impressing others with our worldly success.

Despite our ‘laid back’ image, Australians are some of the hardest workers in the world.

ANNUAL LEAVE:
Australia: 4 weeks
EUROPE: 6 weeks

Isolation can be a significant by-product of the pursuit of material wealth.

In Australia personal debt is between $6-14k

IMPORTANT REALISATION: AUSTRALIA IS AN AFFLUENT SOCIETY

Australia moved out of ‘Struggle Street’ a while ago.

We need to admit that we’re rich and cope with that.

We used to be the lucky country… now have 3 times and much and do we consider ourselves lucky?

What is the meaning of life? What should I do? These questions are more often answered through television than tibet: consumption now drives how many of us define ourselves.

Consumption used to be one box in our lives… now it seems to be all of them.

Has money taken on a spiritual character?

The problem isn’t necessarily about money or consumption. It’s about a sense of attachement with money: our attitude to material posessions.

Are we raising consumers or citizens?

THE MYTH OF AUSTRALIA’S ASPIRATIONAL VOTERS

During the most recent elections, citizens caught up in a desire to be materially richer were labelled ‘aspirational voters’, but you can be materially content and still be aspirational.

Who isn’t aspirational?

Who doesn’t aspire to next year being better? Who are the retrogrades?

THE PROBLEMS OF POVERTY CAN ONLY BE SOLVED BY SOLVING THE PROBLEMS OF AFFLUENZA

Poverty is an issue: we don’t lack the money to fix it. We lack the will.

Solving the problems of poverty can only be solved by solving the problems of affluence.

The cure for Affluenza is collective: the politics of downshifting.

DOWNSHIFTING

Means choosing to live a rich life instead of a life of riches.

Deciding when ‘enough’ is: escaping the consumption cycle.

RESPONSES TO AFFLUENZA

The response to affluenza as a concept seems to have taken the form of:
“We have a responsibility to the market… We can’t just ‘downshift’.” so are neoliberals the new opressors?

In 1999, America’s Business Week magazine published this about “Generation Y”:

“ [Born] between 1979 and 1994… [they are] 60 million strong, more than three times the size of Generation X, they’re the biggest thing to hit the American scene since the 72 million baby boomers.”

Today, Melbourne’s The Age newspaper quoted Richard Neville on the same group:

“The iPod generation hold the key to the future…”

At first, the thought of being part of the iPod generation seemed ridiculous. What’s going on here? Can an entire generation be identified by our worship of an electronic gadget? It seemed to cheesy. Surely baby-boomer Neville had stumbled: there must be a greater glue bonding my generation than a portable music player? Perhaps something a little more noble, something a little less self-serving?

There probably is, but I think we’ll have to earn it.

Think of the iPod: it’s constructed using a cocktail of toxic chemicals, but not many owners would even be aware of that. There are more advanced, less expensive rival music players, but still some consumers pay a premium for the iPod because of its advertising-driven status. With a button, the iPod seperates owners from their community.

Uninformed, materialistic, disconnected. Yep, I guess a few of my peers are tuned-out iPod owners, but iPod Generation goes too far: when I look at my gen-Y friends, I see another picture.

We are informed. We know that information on the world and our place in it doesn’t come home-delivered on TV. Our understanding of the world also comes from the mp3’s, blogs, conversations with friends, family and strangers. We watch 7/9/10 news running dog-on-surfboard stories, and wonder when the billion-people-on-less-than-$1-a day stories are going to seem more important to the Baby Boomer news directors.

We’re not materialistic. Yes, we like to look nice and yes, we do like the idea of living in a house. But many of my friends have taken jobs
We can become known as the iDeal generation. Informed, values driven, connected.

This is a vision where we may not all have portable music players: we might not be defined by our possessions, but we might find ourselves a world worth living in.