Guter Konsum – böser Konsum

David Carlson has been working with design as a competitive weapon for twenty years. With design as an added value the Swedish designer helps his assigners create attractive brands ready for the challenges of the future. His assigners include Absolut, Level Vodka and Sony Ericsson to mention a few.

Since 2005 Carlson is sharing his thoughts on design in a quaterly report, called the »David Report«. The latest issue »I shop therefore I am« is about our consumption. Sponsor is the vodka brand »Absolute« from Sweden. The report consist of his thoughts and insights on consumption and also has an interview with Mathilde Tham, a professor of Beckmans College of Design and features Kristina Dryza, a trend forecaster and Sante Poroma, a Zen teacher from Stockholm.

[…] maybe it’s time to divide our consumption into good and bad consumption? […] we do have the opportunity to, through our consumption and our choices, create a better world (one mustn’t forget that the power of the consumer is enormous). It is all about WHAT we buy and WHAT we choose to invest in, the world we live in will be the result of those choices. There is a difference between shopping and shopping. There’s both cool and uncool consumption.

Du bist, was Du kaufst

Reading this in the foreword makes clear what the report is intending to do: simply saving the world by choosing the »right« commodities. This is of course a dangerous simplifcation of life. It transforms ethics and integrity into a simple commodity. Companies just enhance some good-will and social-responsibility to their products and voilà: here is the GOOD product.

There is a recent example that our production processes are too complicated and difficult as to be understood by the consumer: the need for ecological and sustainable products leads consumers to buy bio-fuel – made of plants like corn or palm oil. The consumer thinks he is doing something good for the planet: less mineral oil, less pollution, less environmental problems. Fine with this part, but what about the people in poorer countries that depend on exactly those plants to survive and now cannot pay for the plants as the growing demand of the (good-will)market boost prices?

The planet cannot be saved by consumistic choices. There is not enough transparency in what’s good or bad in production processes. And: how much time would the consumer have to spend to acquire knowledge in what is good for the different parties in those processes (the African farmer, the Swedish car driver, the American CEO…). There is just not enough capacity for all this and people would end up stubbornly thinking about wether to consume a good or not. This would even strengthen our consumer culture. Already now companies are using the new consumerism: in their for example the big oil and energy producers present themselves as being environmental and socially responsible companies. So would you believe it? Or how much time would you spend on research to find out if there’s truth behind it?

The time used up for this could be better invested into spending time with friends and family (socially) and people interested in our future (politcally) to discuss and take action. However David Report is also going into this direction:

How many times should one exchange the furniture, the colour of the walls and wallpaper before one is satisfied and at peace? It is an enormous restlessness that is exposed here. A race where the mass medial hunt for the latest new product (just for the sake of being new) drives consumers to buy new. Is it when it comes down to it a meaningless hunt for the newest thing, a race that in the long run has no winner? Do we really need another chair?

Products with a longer lifespan would be good for our environment for sure a it means less sources being wasted. But how can we persuade the consumer to keep their things for 30 years or more? Doesn’t everyone want to change the things around from time to time? Probably changeable products would be a solution. Or a service that makes furnitures exchangeable: you can exchange your living room with someone else room after ten years or you can just give it back to the producer that simply refreshes it. Avoiding products by intelligent services – that is also the subject of a book written by Michael Erlhoff, called »Nutzen statt Besitzen« (Utilising instead of posessing).

Noch mehr Zeitaufwand für Kaufentscheidungen?

The future solution cannot be to create a society that consists of consumer-experts that spend even more time on consuming, even if this might be the trend, as Kristina Dryza sees in David Report:

More and more consumers are becoming increasingly inquisitive with their purchasing power and are demanding to know the provenance of products. Today, a silent question of ‘what is the process of this product having come before me?’ is very common. These inquisitive consumers have such a strong comparative awareness, so are always demanding the back-story of products as they’re so well versed in the power of the first person narrative.

This would lead to a world, where we are even more talking about what we bought and why. We would even be more occupied with shopping decisions. This would demand an incredible attention on our consumation. That is quite opposite to the opinion of Zen-Buddhist Sante Poromaa:

Our inner sphere, the place where we are free and present, lucid and attentive has been occupied by demons fighting a war for our attention. Most of these demons come from the special hell known as the Market. The truth is that modern life demands a lot more from us than we have time for. The only solution is to do many things at once, to pay attention to many different voices at the same time.

Even if it tends to solve global problems by the way we consume, this report offers some interesting, partly contradictory positions that may help to make brains work around the subject. Lots of brains will have to work to find solutions to the problem… or maybe first of all define the problem clearly. Probably solving the unknown may afford to leave established systems like »consumation« or »marketing« and apply new methods and categories that are unthinkable at the moment.

David Report is available for free under this address.