The Story of Stuff

I posted about this a while back – isn’t it amazing? Long, but totally worth the watch.

If you’re more interested in this kind of information (particularly, our consumerism culture, how it relates to agriculture, and how we got here), I highly recommend Daniel Quinn’s books. Ishmael and The Story of B are both fantastic.

Wikipedia has a concise summary that is better than what I could say, “Quinn uses the phrase ‘cultural collapse’ to describe the point of history that we are living through today. He believes that circumstances have rendered the cultural mythology of the Takers [what he calls our world culture] meaningless to its people. When this happens to a culture, Quinn states, things fall apart. ‘Order and purpose are replaced by chaos and bewilderment. People lose the will to live, become listless, become violent, become suicidal, and take to drink, drugs, and crime… laws, customs and institutions fall into disuse and disrespect, especially among the young, who see that even their elders can no longer make sense of them.’”

The book isn’t all doom and gloom, though. Quinn says that we’re now at a new era of creating a new culture, because we’ve already reached cultural collapse.

Anyway, the books really blew my mind. Let me know if you decide to pick them up!