Gift giving season

Still on waste. There is a powerful article titled “The Gift of Death” published by the Guardian in 2012 about “pathological consumption” that’s been making rounds in social media.

Its main premise is that humans produce so much, extract resources from the earth so much, sell so much, and buy and give away so much, but we don’t actually need all of those things to survive or exist. These things eventually end up at a landfill, there to remain for the next thousand years.

This rings especially true when we give gifts for Christmas. That few seconds of ephemeral emotion might be worth it, the warm fuzzy feelings or the happiness on the face of our dearly beloveds might even last in our memory for quite a while. But, as the article points out, when the recipient brings the gift home, it will be a miracle if it makes it through to the next holiday season. Research points to only one percent of any such gifts makes it past six months. Waste.

If it’s lucky, that gift could be recycled to someone more appreciative. (I don’t mind recycled gifts if I can use them - it’s the useless knickknacks I have an issue with. Then I wrack my brains trying to think which unlucky friend or family I can foist it too. It’s gotten so bad that I bring corporate gifts like notebooks and more notebooks, pens, and desk calendars to Christmas parties so we can have a white elephant game.)

The Gift of Death points to how much rare metals are needed for electronic gadgets like talking toys or mini racing cars. It points to how much energy is needed for factories to make them. For enormous carbon consumption to transport and distribute them. And then for forests to be pillaged to provide paper packaging, and tons of indestructible plastic for more packaging. More ways that we humans have devised to strip our natural resources.

All this comes into context with Marie Kondo and her new online shop. Remember Kondo? There was a time you couldn’t escape her. Everyone was talking about her, watching her, posting about her, or worse, applying her “teachings”. There was a Kondo-kraze with enthusiastic converts purging their homes of unwanted stuff. Throwing or giving away the accumulation of years of existence.

I was never a convert, and never saw any of her shows, but when I heard she advocated throwing away books, I banished her from the realm of what was possible. Me, staunch resistance against e-books, couldn’t cope with the idea of throwing away the years of happiness ensconced in those pages.

And yet, after imploring her devoted followers to make space and throw away non-essentials, here comes Kondo with an online shop. Urging people to buy even more stuff. That essential lamp, that cannot-be-resisted tea set, that intimate plushie. After all, once the home has been purged, now there’s more space to welcome joy.

Irony of ironies. Financial Times columnist Leo Lewis notes that the “arch-advocate of decluttering is hawking stuff that seems doomed to become clutter”. Hence, the barrage of scoffers and critiques about how hypocritical all this cleansing exercise was. (I would probably be amongst the kibitzers too.)

But, at the same time, Lewis observes that Kondo might actually just be authentically Japanese. While known to be tidy, orderly, and clean, Japanese are also fanatical with collecting and accumulating clutter. In that sense, her Kondo shop might just combine two intrinsic facets of the same Japanese character.

Whatever. She was on the right track with opening up people’s minds to the idea that they don’t actually need all this stuff. Nothing they can bring with them to the next life. Me, I ask for books when someone asks me what I want. Or artwork. That way, I get to promote artists and authors as well. (Hint, hint)