Impetus

25 December 2007

Dear Danny,

We’ve been laboring over the proposition of a green gift for some time now. Early in the process, we both decided that a non-material gift was the most appropriate and meaningful that we could give. This is connected to our ideas and experiences of the green phenomenon, environmentalism, and consumer capitalism. Already this felt like a heavy gift to bestow upon you.

I have a feeling that you aren’t the biggest fan of consumerism, but choosing not to buy a gift for you was still a daunting proposition. Even though the whole Christmas holiday has become a repository for our cultural affinity with monumental amounts of stuff wrapped elevated anxieties. Translation: people are crazy this time year. So why not give the inverse of that drab craziness? Instead of identifying an object that we can only hope will mean something to you, we are going to do our gift instead.

Dara and I have been armchair critics of the whole market economy since we became college students. It’s not that difficult. We live in a liberal city and went to a liberal college. We read a lot of nihilist social theory, we spent plenty of time identifying a broken system, we learned to become critics. Even armed with all this knowledge of what is wrong, we so infrequently address how to live with that wrong, much less how to alter or avert it. It’s certainly is a dour outlook, unless you change your ways. No surprises that capitalism isn’t the great arbiter of equality and justice. More often, we find it doling out injustice and smearing any hope of equality. So we are going to take one small first step toward addressing the role of that system in our lives. No big deal.

But how do we take that step? First we have to acknowledge that we have feet. In this case, our feet are more like ideas, privileges, choices, issues. Then we have to combine our intention and awareness to make those feet move. The result is pretty definitively an action; we take the step. Let’s not get lost in the metaphor, though. That’s just a way to understand it, a door to something we hope will be positive and worthwhile.

Here’s what we are going to do: We are going to track our consumption for three months on a blog that we created (http://whyconsume.blogspot.com). At the end of each month, we are going to tally up our transactions - any time we buy something new - and donate 10% of that to a cause, person, charity, event, whatever of your choosing. We hope that you have something in mind. Maybe there is a local organization in San Francisco that you really like. Maybe you have a friend who is having a hard time. You get the idea. We expect that the blog will also include reflections on the whole experience. We invite you to participate in whatever way you want to. Share it with people.

It’s certainly not going to alter the course of history, but it will build our awareness of what we consume, why we consume it, and what it means to consume it. It will help us to develop a positive intention each time we do make the decision to consume. And it will create a strong incentive to action, especially with your choice of how to spend our money.

So many gifts are a blip. A commercial. A brief passing of some thing that you may forget as soon as the main course arrives. It creates an appetite that is seldom fulfilled. As we meet our needs, we only find more. Like everything, it’s a cycle. We intend to create a sustained gift, one that does not have an incentive to stop. If our consumption decreases, we can increase the amount that we donate to a cause. It also creates a new opportunity to form relationships based on something other than shared material. It’s hard to talk to a sweater.

To some, we imagine that this will sound a little crazy or a little unnecessary. Why keep track? Don’t you already know? Why broadcast it? Who cares? We answer in order: to know; no; because it creates accountability; we care, maybe one day we can convince you that it’s worth caring too. Our hope is that the idea will grow and change and produce some alternative reason to participate in the whole mad mess.

Merry Christmas,


Darren + Dara


P.S. 3 months is our minimum. Maybe we’ll continue in a new way after that time is up.