The Story of Stuff

One of the items featured in yesterday's symposium was The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video by Annie Leonard, which discusses, with the aid of stick-figure animation, the life cycle of stuff in our current paradigm. Most of it I kind of knew, but it was something to see the whole thing presented so starkly and succinctly. My mother's significant other for years railed on about the insanity of our system which champions "throughput"--I knew what he meant, in a vague sort of way, but I think that this video shows it brilliantly. This system, which is basically a ravening maw, razing the earth and leaving destruction in its wake, represents at the very least shortsightedness, if not madness, on a finite planet.

Today I went to both Toys'R'Us and Target, and used my plastic to buy stuff at each. My son had a birthday party to go to; I had a few things to pick up. After the symposium, I couldn't help but be a little sickened by all the stuff I saw today. All the gleaming stuff in pretty packages. The stuff I saw people buying. Nothing to let us know the true cost of any of those things. It bothered me, but it didn't stop me from buying; I didn't stop my son. We try to be "careful" with what we buy...but we had a birthday party to go to, and there are some expectations to meet.

I guess what that means is that there is still a lot of work to be done. That I still have a lot of work to do.

The first part of the movie:

A video response by Mendocino High School Students:


Link:
The Story of Stuff official website -- watch the video, get the DVD, find out how to host a viewing party, and more...