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Beyond economic reality, society suffers today from a deep disenchantment of the world that one could even call an identity crisis. Today, we put forward the individual and not the collective as if the material successes of each one could create happiness for all. Then consumption loses its first finality which is to meet our needs. We finally all consume because others consume. Paradoxically, the models of success conveyed by the media and publicity always put the exception and the performance ahead. It seems necessary to consume to be distinguished, to see its success and difference. A famous French adman has said recently that “if, at fifty, you do not own a Rolex, it means that you have failed your life”. Beyond the cynical message conveyed by this image of success, this logic of claiming one’s identity from consumption is also doomed because our consumption goods are by essence meant to be consumed, to be replaced: the brand new Rolex supposed to represent our success will probably be out-of-date and replaced by a newer model a couple of months later.
We simply forget why we consume and also, what we really want. Is our vocation to consume more and more? As I grew up in a developed country, I have always been supported and surrounded by a society of consumption. I have been incessantly encouraged to consume until consumption in itself became a wish and then a need. The logic of needs, natural at first, has spread to all human desires. Society grasps all of our desires, transform them into needs and then organise the collective production to comply with them.
Isn’t it time to reconsider the economic development model which had lead to the current crisis? Capitalism, since this is what it is all about, if proved to be reliable in creation of wealth, has also showed its incapacity to take into account the environmental, social or ethical dimensions. There is an urgency to define an 'alterdevelopment’ which would be a development radically different from that of today, a plural development of our societies which could propose the exemption from payment, unconditional access to rights, a new relation to time, an alter-globalisation and ecologist step. And alterdevelopment involves a reflexion on a division of relational goods, services with the people, service to the repair of goods (rather than to produce goods of which the lifespan is becoming increasingly short), of cultural and associative activities. Consumption must indeed be related to the aspiration for a better quality of life, and not with an unlimited accumulation of goods, illusory promises of happiness. The objective is to think of consumption in a new way, to put it back in a model of development which should be more accurately, respectful of the environment and, most of all, in phase with our true needs.
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N. Pagnier contributed his article after having read:
'For a World Economy of Parsimony' by B. Vermander
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