Media Mindfulness

I agree and disagree with the criticism of Buy Less Crap. On the one hand I don’t believe we can shop our way out of social and ecological problems. On the other, corporations are the most powerful force on the planet (besides people and nature), so why not change our patterns to force corporations into altering their behavior? We can be like ants who compost the forest floor, but instead we transform the marketing environment with our consumer behavior.
Does Shopping for a Good Cause Really Help? - Newsweek Business - MSNBC.com:

March 14, 2007 - When Ben Davis created buylesscrap.org, a quirky parody of Bono’s (Red) campaign, he thought he’d get a few laughs out of his San Francisco designer friends. But since it launched two weeks ago, the site has received thousands of hits, hundreds of blog mentions—and has raised some very real questions about the spending practices and intentions of “cause marketing” campaigns like Red, which funnel a percentage of profits from the sale of consumer goods to charity. “A part of me was thinking long term about buying as a way to cure things, and feeling that was a bit manipulative,” says Davis, who runs a creative marketing firm. “I think I put a voice to what many people were feeling.”

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