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Fame & Fortune: Judith Levine
Author's year of 'no spending' yields startling results |
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Levine: No, we didn't
buy the cheapest of any category of so-called necessities. As bourgeois,
two-homeowner city professionals we have a rather rarified notion
of necessity. For instance, insulin for our diabetic cat; one can
certainly construe owning a diabetic cat as a luxury to begin with,
but we decided not to drown the cat at the beginning of the year
(laughs). We had Internet because it's almost impossible to run
a business without it, but we didn't have DSL. There was that part
in the book where the guy says, 'Olives, Judith? Are olives a necessity?'
And it's not just olives but really good olives that we must have.
I think that's just a way of showing that necessity is relative,
that the line between necessity and desire is fluid.
Bankrate: Did the experience transform you in any way?
Levine: My partner, Paul, often says that, for him, when you get past that first feeling of anxiety or loneliness or deprivation -- or you get past the behavior of buying your way out of a predicament or buying your way into a pleasure -- something else happens. Some people may discover their inner self; others may have a religious epiphany. My epiphanies happened to be much more social and political, but something else happens, and in that sense consumption obfuscates or eclipses other kinds of experiences and feelings that we can have. They're not all good ones, they're not all easy ones, but I think that they're worth having.
Bankrate: Some readers may be surprised that you came away from it without pointing fingers at the usual suspects, such as marketing and advertising.
Levine: Capitalism provides an enormous variety of pleasures -- things and experiences and services. So to tell people that they should reject those things for something more wholesome, well, I don't think it's very effective to tell people to eschew things that feel good. You can surely let them know there are other things that feel good that don't use up gasoline, for instance, but some things that use up gasoline are also really fun, like snowmobiles. That's the complication of it. We've come this many centuries and defined and refined the things that we can make and use. I don't know that we can argue that these things are not good for us. Every benefit has its cost, and what are the costs that we are willing to put up with? Is it OK that our children are not going to be able to breathe 50 years from now? No, that's not OK, but I think most people are not aware of that stuff. It helps to start to know about the afterlives of our possessions and the consequences, both environmental and social, of this huge and increasingly fast consumption and disposal.
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