Buy Nothing Day

11/25/2005

Friday

There's an interesting grassroots movement afoot that you won't hear about on any of the major U.S. TV networks or print media. Apparently it's because the movement goes against American policy. Since when has the major media been concerned with abiding by U.S. policy? These are the same folks who criticize and blame the president for everything from world hunger, war, pestilence, famine, hurricanes and earthquakes. These folks hate U.S. policy! So what policy is it that they are worried about violating so much that they will compromise the sacred right to free speech?

The policy of consumerism. That's right, the media outlets that are forever covering the plight of the poor, the homeless and the disadvantaged will NOT sell advertising time or space to a group promoting a day to buy nothing. The Buy Nothing crowd are predominately environmentalists, socialists and assorted pinko wackos that we all know are hated and reviled so much by the major media. NOT. So what's the deal?

Buy Nothing Day is simply a designated day to stay home and buy nothing. In the U.S., this is the last Friday of the month, otherwise known as Black Friday, when stores are trying to make a profit after being in the red the rest of the year. In other countries, it occurs the last Saturday in November. The thrust of the movement is anticapitalist and anticonsumerism. Such a movement scares the hell out of major corporations who rely on rampant consumerism to build their own wealth. And who owns the major networks? Westinghouse, General Electric and Disney, entities who have a definite interest in getting people to spend, spend, spend. Anyone with a stake in the stock market has a vested interest in keeping the economy chugging along, which includes anyone with 401K, 403B, pensions, 529 college and universal life insurance plans. I probably forgot a bunch. The point is, the official policy of the U.S. government is to promote as much consumerism as possible. This is one policy the corporate media agrees with.

I'm a conservative, but I see some real merits of Buy Nothing Day beyond saving the environment, releasing the slaves from sweatshops and generally trying to hurt Wal-Mart.

First off, it's definitely better for personal finances. The hoards busting down the doors of malls and stores everywhere are primarily using plastic to snatch up all the "bargains." Do you really need that plasma screen TV? Even if it is 50% off, paying late fees, interest and other financial costs over the next 25 years hardly seems worth it as you will be paying back that 50% and then some. Sorry, but an iPod is not a necessity of life. All this frenzy encourages personal debt. We have gone from a national savings rate of 7% in the 80's to 0% (or even negative) today. We are not doing the economy any favors by being on the brink of bankruptcy. We need to have several Buy Nothing Days.

There is also a less economic reason to Buy Nothing. Think about the clutter of a typical household. We buy bigger houses with more storage for all of our junk. That junk represents parts of our lives, so it's only natural we would be reluctant to part with it. Yet the stuff rules over us. We have to insure the stuff that can be replaced or be prepared to haul the stuff with us that can't in the event of a hurricane or other impending disaster. We buy burglar alarms and security systems to keep others from swiping our stuff. We buy other stuff to keep the stuff we have clean, safe, secure and convenient: Shelves, hangers, containers, closets, organizers, bins, and conveyer belts.

The clutter and junk take a spiritual toll on us as we have to work Sundays in order to pay for the stuff and the interest. Our kids have attention deficits because they have so many choices of toys. They run from one to another, making a huge circuit. If they played with each toy for 10 minutes, how many days would pass before they played with all their toys? Too many choices equals too little demands on their imaginations.

The holiday season is a real spiritual battlefield. The baby Jesus may have your heart, but will you be putting your real cash towards not being embarrassed by a paltry offering under the tree? Santa is an anagram for Satan! The pressure is ENORMOUS. I have 6 people who work with/for me. If I don't come up with something impressive, my reputation as a generous supervisor is questionable. Can I really buy their respect? What about clients? Heaven forbid we neglect them! A teacher of children? Pay up baby, you need to give them something fun and educational. And parents, you'd better come up with something nice for your kid's teachers if you expect teachers to see you as anything other than a poor cheapskate. Then there's the postal carrier, the paper boy, the hairdresser, the auto mechanic, your doctor, nurse and bus drivers.

This is not limited to the secular, heathen crowd. There are Sunday school children and their teachers to show gratitude for. Pastors and choir directors. If you have a group, such an adult Sunday school, there are parties to go to, many involving gift exchanges. This is not to mention a host of worthy causes such as Toys for Tots and the Salvation Army and the adopting of poor families.

I haven't even mentioned our own relatives and immediate families. This gets into some serious money, time and trouble. My wife has already put in her order for family passes to the new aquarium.

A Buy Nothing Day sounds like a good idea, to me. Perhaps because I'm frugal at heart and generally a cheap bastard. But if it weren't for our personal debt, I'd be able to divert a lot more towards the causes of world hunger, the homeless and the environment.

Big corporations, big media, big government and most of all, big banks, want you to keep spending and consuming. And they eschew the concept of a Buy Nothing Day. I believe in capitalism, but capitalism ungoverned by a proper conscience and perspective becomes a carnivorous and insatiable cannibal that feeds on its own young. WE are the ones with the power to decide on what sort of society we want to live. Do the next 30 days truly symbolize a society that we want for ourselves and our children? Could we collectively resolve to keep ourselves under control and behave as if we possessed some degree of reason?

A Buy Nothing Day won't change things much unless we take the time to think about our purchases and do so wisely. Keep things in perspective and exercise moderation. The hangover from this season is usually severe.

Checkout Buynothingforchristmas. This has a more spiritual and Christian-friendly take on all this.

BTW, Capitalone just doubled my credit limit. YeeHaw!

D.

A Proverbial Wife:

11/22/2005

Tuesday

This blog has suffered mightily, partly because it appears I'm attracting much more support and advice than I could possibly give.

But Square1 has revived me and my muse with With her post about the Proverbial Woman. I want to go just a bit more in-depth on this, because it is such a wonderfully powerful passage of scripture. And it depicts a picture of a woman who embodies many ideals worthy of a modern woman.

First of all, this is not some weak-minded submissive tool and fool of a woman so often depicted by secular society of Christian women. She is strong (See Proverbs 31:17) Also consider in verse 16 that she buys property and begins her own commercial farming enterprise. In fact, this woman is a virtual commercial enterprise unto herself (see verses 16, 18,20,24,31) buying, selling and giving to charity. Surely this woman embodies many ideas promoted by modern feminists, "Give her the fruit of her hands and let her own works praise her at the gates." vs 31.

Isn't this what most women want? Some degree of economic power and social recognition? She does this, all while taking care of the rest of the family. There's a lot of stamina required in this, so it is little wonder that strength is a central theme of this passage.

Square1 opines that most women strive to make their home comfortable for their families. While it may still be true, it is a concept that I see fading from the familial landscape. More and more women are opting to make their home more comfortable for themselves. While women have historically been homemakers in some capacity, this is becoming less true amongst young women of today. The generation entering into familyhood is increasingly one that is becoming more distant from some basic homemaking skills:

-Our proverbs 31 woman starts her day by cooking for everyone else. I've found more and more young women who are clueless about cooking. In former times they would have learned this skill from their own mothers. But as baby boom mothers entered the workforce, the staples became frozen pizza, frozen waffles, cold cereal, fish sticks and hot dogs. Any wonder why we're all getting fat?

-Our Proverbs 31 woman had a VERY keen knowledge of money and its management. Today's younger generation are awash in debt and have no idea how to save and manage finances.

- This excellent woman made her own clothes. This served a couple of purposes. One, I'm sure it saved money for the family but she also parleyed this into extra income. I don't know if I've met a woman who could sew under the age of 30. There are several knitters out there, but I'm not sure this rises to the standard of buying wool and flax and putting a hand to the spindle or sewing silk and linen clothes.

Square1 is doing as well or better than most, I think. It sounds like she might be getting some structure into her day which will benefit her and the entire family.

One last bit about Proverbs 31. I'm not sure why he calls himself Lemuel, but we know this is King Solomon. The advice he is given concerning women is given to him by his mother. That would be Bathsheba. Yes, that Bathsheba, the one who Solomon's father, David, lusted after. Despite whatever circumstances surrounding her and David's meeting and union, she did bring some wisdom of her own to the table which she shared with her son who shares it with us. She wasn't perfect by any means, but God was still able to capitalize on her strengths and pass them on to her son. Her influence might have been the deciding factor behind his asking God for the gift of wisdom. The better part of wisdom is recognizing it in others, which Solomon did when he took note of what his mother passed on to him.

D.

Kids in Marriage

11/02/2005

Wednesday

Once again, FTN hits a vital nerve in his latest offering. He basically writes about how the parental relationship is of vital importance to the point where the marriage should supersede the parental relationship. That there should be times when the parents take time for each other, to the exclusion of the children. Sadly, the reverse is more often the case. Parental efforts often end up excluding the marriage relationship, and more specifically the husband.

Pretty Peanut even talks a bit about how this happened in her own marriage where her children became #1 and her husband came #2. Not So Normal is actually fairly lucky to be #2. Some of us are even lower on the scale following work, parents, pets, chores, social obligations and virtually everything else.

This is sad and tragic, because it is not setting a good example for the children. Linda Weber in Denalyn Lucado's compilation The Joy of A Promise Kept speaks to this specifically:

"Consider that by making the marriage your highest priority, that you are giving your children the greatest gift of all. The gift of their future. Well-adjusted children don't happen by accident. In the 20 year window of opportunity to nurture, the climate is set to give them a legacy that will sustain them well into their golden years and will help generations into the future. You are helping to create solid citizens in a world where most are cast adrift."

Women especially struggle with this tension between the demands of being a parent and caregiver, and being a loving wife. Children are black holes when it comes to time and attention. They will take however much you are able to give, while demanding ever more. Is it any wonder that a mother's chief complaint is exhaustion? Any demands a husband might make is seen as an intrusion, when it is actually the opposite. The children will always seek to occupy and possess the size and shape of what ever energy exists. A husband has his own responsibilities, even if it is just earning money for the family. He has other demands on his time and other obligations. Young children do not. Yet, their needs often take supremacy over whatever needs he has, because the children have more time and energy to devote towards whining, crying and otherwise sapping time and energy away from either or both parents.

So why don't we hear more men complaining of exhaustion? Why aren't more women complaining about how the men are making children the highest priority? One simple reason is because men are less inclined to get sucked into the vortex of a child's demands. The crucial role men play in a child's development is encouraging independence. Women might attribute men's inaction on the parental front as laziness, but men tend to be more inclined to allow children to solve their own conflicts and problems. At the same time, I've observed a lower tolerance for childish foolishness by men. The reason why men are often more successful in gaining compliance from their children is because they tolerate defiance for fewer trials. IOW, when he tells a child to do something he expects for it to be done after the first request. Failure to do so often elicits consequences. Mothers, OTOH, are more apt to repeat the instruction over and over until they get to a breaking point where they act. A lower tolerance would gain compliance much sooner.

Okay, I'm generalizing and painting with a brush the size of the side of a barn, here. But I've seen many mothers absent mindedly feeding toddlers who were capable of feeding themselves. I've never seen a father do this. I've seen unruly children riding roughshod over their mothers and they straighten up as soon as the father walks in the door. When it comes to discipline, men seem to wield more influence. The same is true of reinforcement. In John Gottmen's research, he found that children responded more powerfully to a father's praise as well as to his admonishments as measured by blood pressure, heart rate and skin conductivity. In otherwords, father's actually carry greater emotional bang-for-the-buck. This is not to minimize the the impact of mother's. But the mother's greatest impact is indirect. The father's interactions with his children are directly influence by the quality of interractions with his wife. IOW, a more emotionally secure father can result in better emotionally adjusted children. Women are a key component to this because a wife has an even greater magnitude of emotional impact on her husband than he has on the children. For sure, a wife can make or break the climate of her household, but not in the manner most women would believe. The amount of impact a mother can have on her children's emotional health is directly proportional to the amount of emotional comfort she provides for the father.

This flies in the face of what a lot of people think about family dynamics. You can read about the science and application behind it in Gottman's Emotional Intelligence: The Heart of Parenting. His research can also be found in back issues of the Journal of Family and Marital Therapy.

This does not mean that emotional impact doesn't run in the other direction. In fact, it does. A man has a powerful impact his wife's well-being by promoting a more positive climate. He should especially be wary of criticism in the form of sarcasm which can quickly turn things sour. Withdrawn hostility is also a pitfall that men can fall in to. Sincere compliments, and positively affirming statements and actions can help buffer against the negatives. The ideal ratio of positive interraction to negatives appears to be about 5:1. Research shows that marriages that can roughly establish this pattern are happier and more fulfilling than those with less.

The good news is that FTN’s wife *has* responded, thus bucking a pattern set by many who have LL’s in avoidance behaviors.

D.