"As you exit the consumer society" by Serge Latouche "Why should I care about posterity? Posterity have never bothered me? "The problem of sovracconsumo of our resources we could in fact also liquid with this famous line from Groucho Marx . The point, rather very serious, is that part of us today are taking that phrase literally.
Yet Pliny the Elder already prediction: "The things that we ruin and lead us to hell are those it (the Earth) has hidden within it, things that are not generated in a moment ... As innocent as happy, indeed even our lives would be fine if nowhere else he turned his cravings, but only what is on the surface of the earth! "
's new book
Serge Latouche - now recognized as the guru of the philosophy of decline - by Title
"As you exit the consumer society" (ed. Bollati-Boringhieri pp. 205, €. 16.00), reiterates and summarizes what is expressed in its previous publications on the subject (The challenge of the short stretch on contraction and decrease serene), and responding to criticism in the meantime giuntegli also a part of the environmental world, both tracing back the thought of leading scholars of the theories of sustainability from the '60s of the last century to today.
Latouche taken from a well known: the mass consumer society has reached a dead end. It 's a company that has its base - indeed its essence - in unlimited growth, while the physical, geological and biological prevent it from continuing on that road, given the finiteness of the planet. According to Latouche is too late to correct our behavior. "Even if we reduced our carbon footprint to a sustainable level, we would still have a temperature rise of two degrees by the end of the century. Now the problem is not to avoid a catastrophe, but only to limit it, and above all be wondering how to handle it. "
In this text, written in an accessible and informative tone, while the author tries to reconstruct the various steps that led to the development of consumerism, starting from the far 1750 with the birth of Western capitalism and political economy. From the essay "Wealth of Nations " in which Adam Smith professes that the enrichment of one will eventually have a positive impact on everyone, to get to the 50s of the 900 with the birth of consumer society, when the system will release all its destructive and creative potential through its three main pillars: advertising , tirelessly creating the desire to consume, the credit, which provides the means to consume even those who did not money the planned obsolescence, which ensures the required renewal application.
The model provided by the Club of Rome in famous report The Limits to Growth " (1972!) And unfortunately so far proved very reliable, placed between the end of the consumer society 2030 and 2070. The dream at that point - because of the growing destruction of our ecosystem - will turn into a nightmare.
What to do? How to get out? Latouche - to answer the main criticisms against him, blaming the decline on the theory of utopia be difficult to achieve because the world can not be stopped and reduced post-industrial era and that he also contradicts the philosophy of sustainable development in As the latter, however, also provides a strong growth even if the ecological - states that his first wants to be a provocative slogan that highlights the need to practice a break with a company whose goal is growth for growth. "Breaking with the company's growth - Latouche says - does not mean supporting another economic growth and not another, it means out of the growth and development, and therefore the economy, namely economic imperialism, for find the social and the political. " To do this we must pursue two new objectives: the decolonization of the imaginary and the construction of another possible world.
The so-called "green growth" he believes to be an oxymoron: "Of course, with better fuel burns less oil and low energy light bulbs will consume less power, but if you spin the engine for more time and more light bulbs, the problem is not solved. Ideally remove the time of the collapse. " In addition, I might add, if ever more people will have access to those in the next few years technologies that until a few years ago were reserved by the Western peoples is no doubt that we will not go very far yet. If only the Chinese (not to mention India and Brazil), whose population amounts to one billion three hundred million people aspire to more correctly, the same standard of living we in the West, but the planet's resources are always the same , the slice of cake in common will inevitably be smaller and smaller.
The proposed solution is of course very complex and difficult synthesis (I refer you to read the book). Latouche invokes the thought of all the major social theorists of the post-development by Geogescu-Roegen, in Illich, in Castoriadis, in Gorz and support as our crisis is fundamentally cultural and civilization. He realizes how difficult it is for us to be aware of the fact that economics is a religion from which we must free ourselves by force of circumstances and repeats his hypothesis based on the principles of corporate so-called sobriety "8 R": Reassess, reconceptualize, Restructuring, relocation, redistribute, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Aware of the impossibility of achieving this profound transformation process in the short term, Latouche suggests a kind of transitional societies which have meanwhile directed the following 10 point program:
1. Restore sustainable ecological footprint
2. Reduce transport costs by internalising environmental taxes adequate
3. Relocate activities
4. Restoring family farming
5. Redistribute profits earned by the productivity gains to reduce working time and create jobs
6. Restart production of relational goods
7. Reduce energy waste by a factor of 4
8. Substantially reduce the advertising space
9. Reorient the technical and scientific research
10. Reappropriate the money
Among the proposed solutions is the abandonment of the currency only for the benefit of single "regional currencies" (not necessarily convertible with each other), adopted a range of population between ten thousand and a million people who achieve a good balance between efficiency and resilience (the ability to regenerate) and that may actually contribute to the emergence of many bio or eco-regions. Take, for example to 'strategic importance that would also have the sole distribution and consumption of products Km zero and exclusively seasonality. It would then indeed a great sacrifice for us to give up the purchase of pineapples in Costa Rica?
E ' Clearly, though - Latouche is aware - that the stakes are enormous and that its proposal is aimed at obtaining low approval, at least for now. They are proposing a totally new cultural model. The company's decline to inspire as opposed to the current the spirit of giving. You will have to replace groped predator mentality in dealing with nature, the values \u200b\u200bof altruism, reciprocity, and the friendliness of the environment. In the beautiful metaphor of Kenneth Boulding and taken up by Andrea Segrè in his "Lessons of ecostile " (ed. B. Mondadori) - Another interesting text that I suggest - we should replace the cowboy economy , founded precisely on the unlimited exploitation of natural resources, economy " cosmonaut", Earth, conceived as a ' single large spacecraft equipped with limited reserves, where man must find his place as part of a complex ecological system.
An entire chapter of the work, Serge Latouche is dedicated to what he considers one of his principal teachers and inspirations,
Ivan Illich . According to Illich the demise of the company's growth is not is necessarily bad news. Being forced to live differently, the man finally can live better by consuming less and working according to his theory of
" modern existence." In particular, the text stops to analyze the concept expressed by Illich and defined by the term
"decolonization of the imagination," one of the cardinal principles - for Latouche - the new mentality, which will characterize the new economy in decline . The man will have to reconceptualize and redefine, resize, view the decline, although their concepts of wealth and poverty. For example, exploitation of fossil fuels allows an extraordinary devaluation of human labor with the result of an overabundance artificial easily detectable in our hypermarkets. One consequence of this is the so-called
trivialization of the "wonders" . We think now the use of superlatives in advertising inflated absolute (high, pure, etc.). And adjectives such as extraordinary, exceptional, amazing, etc.. How many times do happen to read on the poster that advertises a film straight out to the movies here is the movie of the year! But how many films of the year are served up over a single year ... have you ever counted them?!
Latouche then resumed, and make it his own, another aspect of Illich's thought, that's harsh criticism of the school as an institution. In his opinion, the educational model proposed today is responsible for getting into the minds of the youth of those defenses necessary to withstand the economic system. "Most people - Illich writes - learn in school is not only the acceptance of his fate, but also the servility" . In this regard, and after more than two decades by the conclusions of Illich, the fine-provoking essay Paola Mastrocola, "Remove Noise" (ed. Guanda) unfortunately it is a confirmation. We must therefore engage in a detoxification process that must necessarily begin with the school. According to a study conducted in Belgium in 2008, three thousand pupils of secondary school (high schools, technical and vocational schools) only 45% know what a renewable energy, almost nine out of ten students ignore the causes of global warming, more than 60 % confuse the greenhouse effect with the hole in the ozone layer, not to mention the concept of ecological footprint, virtually ignored by the majority of the students ... The new generations are culturally disarmed. On this point, but I disagree in part by the thought. For professional reasons in recent years I have had the pleasure and good fortune to work with a number of teachers of all levels. I met people who are aware and sensitive to these issues that are striving every day to develop the involvement of students. Unfortunately, they still represent a minority.
Not to mention the parents. According to a 2009 Gallup poll 41% of Americans think that the alarm on global warming is exaggerated by the media. In 2008, the percentage of citizens on the same sample was 35% ... It would be unfair to single institution leaning against the school, said Latouche therefore, the responsibility for this state of affairs. Today parents have abandoned, for various reasons, their role as educators, delegating to the school and even more on television: the advertising system occupies the space left by the parents and the school can not fill. The school now has to stop transmitting the religion instead of growth and form citizens capable of thinking for themselves.
Future generations will have to create a separate company from the old patterns. Illich proposes what he described as "tecnodigiuno ascetic" : "We try to give something up, not to beautify our lives but to remind ourselves what we are attached to this modern world."
To exit from the consumer society and realize that the decrease is essential to get out of his system
"cretinizzazione civic , denounce the attack advertising and combat what Cornelius Castoriadis
, another thinker dear to Latouche, call "
onanism consumerism and television."
Basically Latouche calls for a cultural revolution that lead to those changes essential to the survival of our species on the planet. He also believes the economic crisis as a good starting point if the release will facilitate the growth of religion and in particular - and to demonstrate that perhaps the project that he proposes is less utopian than it might appear to a first approach - it shows as a model society to follow the so-called Transition Town
, born in Ireland and that is spreading in the United Kingdom, as a form of construction that is closest to an urban society, guided by the philosophy of decline. Link these cities first energy self-sufficiency in anticipation of the end of fossil energy sources.
I do not know what its proposal is feasible in practice, it is nevertheless true that the theories of Latouche deserve respect and attention especially because at least provide a starting point, a useful basis to begin the debate on building new corporate models, new ways of life to which the human species will sooner or later must adapt.
Michele Salvadori
