雖然有點莫名其妙，但是忍不住用英文寫了。沒興趣的看看影片就好。
The story is interesting and really a food for thought. I am not surprise with the fact that products are ‘made to break.’ What interests me is that how people today accept the idea rather really think about it. We are kind of ‘brain washed’ by the idea of ‘planned obsolescence’ that we are used to change everything for a period of time and believe it is a normal way to live. Therefore clothes and shoes need to be ‘seasonal’ even I don’t really see what’s different between this winter and the previous one. Also there are new smartphones released twice or three times every year and this really makes me feel sick. Everyone see you as an idiot if you insist to fix your printer rather than buy a new one. ‘But fixing spends more money.’ one might say. That’s because it is made to be so. The people who sell you products are exactly the same people who provide service of fixing. They can of course modulate your shopping habit just by raising repair fee and encourage you to buy a new one.
However, I am not meant to accuse the ‘conspiracy’ of planned obsolescence or try to become an environmentalist. I am not an economist, a socialist or a designer. So it would be too rough for me to directly support something like ‘degrowth’ though I do feel happy longer to plan and have a trip than to have a new piece of cloth (the ‘new cloth’ always becomes an old one when the next item is bought). What I understand is that I am also part of this system and have a ‘normal’ shopping habit in history. It means I through things away and pollute places like ‘Ghana’ in the video. Therefore accusing people who create, sell, buy or dump things is just an illusion escape from my own responsibility.
What the story inspires me is that I should retake my responsibility for consuming, which means I don’t have to stop shopping, but I should start to shop with insight. It is no wrong to buy something new, but the behavior of ‘shopping’ should contain more independent thoughts rather than just being ‘hypnotized’ by the advertisement and the society. Businessmen have their job to persuade you, the government is long known to do stupid things, but you have the power to choose for yourself. So think twice before buying, but treat your thought without judgments, both good and bad. Sometimes we want new stuff for need, sometimes for fun, and sometime for vanity. It is not the problem of which is right and which is wrong. It is about whether we are clear about this at the time we shop.
For many people this may like talk in sleep, but I believe that our thought and believe change the world we’re in. We are more powerful and free than we know. We may not be somebody, but just practice to think independently and take time to understand more about ourselves would the world change little by little. What I believe is that changing consuming behavior will not crash the world or bring us back to the Stone Age, but we will shop more wisely and more friendly to both ourselves and the world. After all, once you are enlightened, there is no way you would turn back to ignorance.
留言列表
