Origins of Consumerism: Branded at Birth

How our consumerist behaviour adds to climate change

In the 1930s, Paul Mazure, a leading Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers, wrote: "We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs."  (from the BBC film Century of the Self)

Does our consumerism lead to global hunger and poverty?

Branded at birth.

Are our lives dictated by our wants? Plant a tree and repay humanity.

By the 1950s, consumerism was thoroughly interwoven in the fabric of American society. In 1955, economist Victor Lebow would epitomize the new status quo, writing in the Journal of Retailing: “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.”

Plant a tree today.

The question being pondered upon today is why millennials are not buying cars? And the surprising answer is: Owning a smartphone or other mobile device, with its monthly fees of network access, data plan, insurance, and app services, is almost comparable to the monthly payments required when leasing a Honda Civic.

And that is why and how we have taken upon us the burden of 
"I shop, therefore I am"

Reduce, reuse and recycle 


