If you haven’t noticed yet, EcoSalon has a bit of a crush on Russell Brand. I mean, he’s adorable and all, but it’s his brazen views on politics, commerce, and a fierce commitment to revolution that we find so irresistibly prescient. Take this, a clip from his recent visit to #OccupyWallStreet where he committed to use the sales of his new book “Revolution” to fund nonprofit causes to make this world a better place. Plus, he hugs a cop

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The Internet has changed a lot of things including the face of Corporate America. But can it save the wobbly tower of capitalism from collapsing in on itself?

The free market. It gave us Oreos. And fracking. It gave us stacked mega-corporations. And according to Klint Finley of TechCrunch, thanks to our inter-connectivity, it’s dissolving those mega-corporations too, so it seems.

What we have now, through the worldwide web, notes author and marketing expert Seth Godin in his book “We Are All Weird”, is the end of mass. “[I]t will fail; it must. The tide has turned, and mass as the engine of our culture is gone forever.” Granted, standing inside a Walmart soda aisle may have you thinking a bit differently, but Godin says that the way of the modern world is now, “more information, more choice, more freedom, and more interaction.” This benefits us certainly as individuals. Just Google anything, really (I randomly typed “ketchup cupcakes“, which I now regret). We can find each other now, we can weird out together. And so can companies. They kind of have to.

“Corporations are arguably more powerful today than ever before. But the economy isn’t dominated by a handful of megalithic conglomerates. It consists of hundreds or thousands of smaller, more specialized firms,” writes Finley. The future is dominated by “a new power structure: the mega network.” These companies are being linked by software technology, and directed by it, too, says Finley, ” The software network is diversifying and growing into the networked equivalent of a mega-conglomerate.”

And while these “mega-network” entities put a lot of the emphasis on “mega,” Godin says that approach won’t really last. “The thing that made us rich was our ability to process in mass, produce in mass, ship in mass, and market in mass.” But the wealth is fueling a movement “that undermines the foundation that earned us the wealth,” he writes. “We need a mass audience” for it all to continue, but the next breakthroughs aren’t going to be about fueling the mass, he says. “The demand for normal…is now ironically and inevitably clashing with the trend toward weird.”

And you can call that the beginning of the end of mass, or as Finley notes, the die-off of the conglomerates. Through networks, driven by the dotcoms, which are fueled by “the weird,” we’re expanding on our downsizing. Growing our small. Normalizing niches in ways that provide more chances to the little start-up with the support of massive networks. Make money, grow a business, but with the help of virtual corporations, “temporary alliances of businesses pursuing common goals. In other words, networks,” writes Finley. “Maybe this won’t last. Maybe Google, which is becoming pretty diverse itself, will become the dystopian mega-corporation the cyberpunks feared. But for now it seems that the mega-network is here to stay.”

But if the network can challenge out the heavy history of our Corporate America, is it bad to be mega?

Can the networks prevent another Enron? Can they reform Wall Street? Can they keep new flavors of diabetes and obesity causing soft drinks off the shelves? Probably not. But it seems they can help to broaden our options. Or as Godin puts it, keep things weird. “The biggest cultural shift that the Internet has amplified is the ability to make an impact on your own culture,” he writes. “New culture is created on top of the old one, and then another layer of culture goes on top of that.” Which is how networks work. Layers upon shifting layers. But unlike corporate conglomerates, networks don’t have to be endless unstable pillars built up to the sky. They can be closed loops—concentric circles that contain energy and resources—that maintain their wholeness infinitely, instead of eventually toppling over.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Image: stuck in customs

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Really.

With population growth, industrialization and limited resources, access to freshwater has become a crisis. 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water – that’s more than one out of six people. Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related illness. Water is such an issue that it is a key component in achieving the United Nation’s Millenium Development Goals.

These statistics are hard to grapple with, but for perspective, consider that this past weekend, a 30-second advertising spot during the Super Bowl ran for $3.5 million.

According to Water.org, the same amount of money it took to bring you a baby being catapulted to a bag of Doritos, could have been used to get 140,000 people water for life. For every 30 seconds of advertising, you could give hundreds of thousands of people around the world access to the one of the essential items that you need to survive.

Diverting Super Bowl advertising dollars to the water crisis may not be a viable solution, but it’s a start. Instead of being captivated by flashy cars and beer, imagine if just a percentage of those advertising budgets went to solving global problems instead of funding a vicious consumer cycle focused on buying more. One can dream.

Images: AngieSix [top left], hdptcar [right]

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You don’t want it or need it but somebody will convince you otherwise.

The economy is in the toilet, and people are buying less stuff. The point of advertising is to entice people to buy more stuff, even if—especially if—they don’t want it, but failing to add an addictive element in your product, means a rough road for anyone trying to hawk merchandise. Out, then, with traditional merchandise, and in with new stuff, stuff that’s easy to sell and even easier to buy.

Benneton is leading the way in this field, aggressively advertising a product called UNHATE across the world. Benneton doesn’t actually produce UNHATE, they make clothes, but in this economy, why not serve up some bullshit and then market the hell out of it? It’s not really fair to advertise for the lack of something that doesn’t actually exist materially anyway—I mean, I don’t hate yellow mustard now the way I did when I was sixteen, so does Benneton get credit for the “sale” there? I’m not so sure, but you’ve got to applaud their efforts.

In New York, Manhattan Mini Storage is selling political progressivism, albeit with a decidedly pro-remote-storage agenda. As with UNHATE, Manhattan Mini Storage’s advertised product doesn’t really have anything to do with the product it sells (i.e., mini-storage), but these days, lest we forget, It’s the economy, stupid. This campaign even implies a kind of stick-to-your-guns or at least a stick-to-your-stuff conservatism generally associated with the political right, but in such a Democratic city, well, who cares?

Patagonia, no stranger to socially conscious salesmanship, might just take the anti-marketing cake. This holiday season, they’re instructing consumers not to buy stuff at all. (I know, the campaign is about buying less, but you’ll have to buy all of nothing at least few times in order to achieve that less-ness.) Ironically, this works in Patagonia’s favor, as few of their items come bundled  eschewing the desire to buy more actually leads you back up the mountain. Brilliant!

In 2010, Nike launched a campaign aimed at normalizing the societal status of a big butt. As a sample taken from any mall will show you, the rump chosen by Nike here is by no means normal, but given America’s obesity epidemic, male and female, it would seem that most people are happy to accept anything, big asses included. Bear in mind, of course, that Nike isn’t selling the actual big asses themselves – Nike is marketing their acceptance.

Finally, there’s this from Bjorg Jewelry, which can really only be summarized as ennui-cum-sociopathy. Granted, the spot is titled “Heresy,” and this season’s “anti-marketing” certainly embodies a heretofore heterodox form of capitalism. But where Benneton asks you to kiss your enemy if you can’t afford their stuff, Bjorg asks you to immolate a beautiful young woman. Since fewer people can afford Bjorg than Benneton, it’s only a matter of time before we see sacrificial pyres erected from sea to shining sea. Yikes.

Image: Keoni Cabral, psfk, Nike Blog, AdRants, Alltop

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A review of The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth.

Our most pressing climate change challenge isn’t what you might think, and according to a new book, there is not one but a growing number of planetary emergencies. Respected scientists James Hansen and Johan Rockström warn that climate change is only one of nine “planetary boundaries,” or crucial processes that allow the earth’s environment to let us live in safety.

Many societies have arrived at a point in which we have crossed over three of the planetary boundaries upon which all life depends, say scientists. These boundaries are soil (nitrogen) cycle depletion, species’ extinction and climate carbonization.

And the culprit for this lethal attack on our ecology? Modern capitalism’s incessant drive to expand. It’s the 800-pound gorilla, also called “the market,” the authors aim to wrestle with in this provocative book. A critique of this grow-or-die system of production, distribution and consumption that began in Western Europe nearly two centuries ago is the special focus of John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York’s book The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth.

The trio of writers first revisit Karl Marx’s notion of a “metabolic rift,” a crack that he believed separated man from nature. Marx studied ecology deeply, and came to understand the import of a breach in how people live and work to create the world around them in a capitalist society. This rift upends for reasons of private profit the most basic relations of human beings: those between themselves and the land.

The authors then move to unpack four basic areas of inquiry. (The curious reader will enjoy the challenging sections, but I suspect progress is also going to require a few extra bumper stickers.) One is the unsustainable development of capitalism. In simple terms, this is the system’s built-in drive to generate radical imbalances of personal wealth. Enabling this process are the assumptions and conclusions of mainstream economists. They love math, so all the better to monetize Mother Nature and give her a price in the marketplace. These economists’ dominant approaches take on a kind of “Alice in Wonderland” mentality, for those of us who haven’t forgotten our childhoods. The authors argue this “Wonderland” is a danger to us and the planet.

Foster and his fellow writers also take on ecological paradoxes that are not headline news. Take the work of British economist and logician William Stanley Jevons. Jevons focused on coal, the essential fuel to power British industrialization a century and a half ago and created the Jevons Paradox which says, “That the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption.” Just the opposite was and is the case now, Foster, Clark and York explain. To this end, they survey current efforts to economize on the use of fossil fuel, and explain how and why such efforts net unintended consequences. “The result is the production of mountains upon mountains of commodities, cheapening unit cost and leading to greater squandering of material resources.” Their Marxian approach is counter-intuitive to say the least.

A section, the book’s longest, on the dialectics (study of change) of nature returns us to Marx’s writings as an environmentalist. This is perhaps the most complex part of the book, but those who stick with it will gain nuanced insights concerning the interrelatedness of nature and society. (One thing is certain. The book’s more than 90 pages of notes offer vital information to address the planetary emergency.)

The authors offer no blueprints for a transition, rather, it’s about “us” as imperfect people finding common ground and beginning the difficult work of creating a more civilized and sustainable way of living and working.

Call it the intersection of informed study and capitalist anarchy. The latter won’t stop on its own. That’s up to us.

The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, ISBN: 978-1-58367-218-1, $17.95 paperback, 544 pp., October 2010, Monthly Review Press

Seth Sandronsky lives and writes in Sacramento, California.

Image: Some Driftwood

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I’m always tempted by those clever hooks for purses to keep better track of our keys. They’re usually hidden in my bag under a bushel of important papers, hair ties, various wallets and glasses. Digging for keys is adding years to my life. It’s that stressful because disorder complicates my life.

There are people out there called professional organizers who charge hourly rates to box and label the accumulation in our homes. And everywhere you look, there are attractive storage boxes and baskets for sale to keep things in their proper places in our offices and homes. What I wouldn’t do to keep my family’s things in their proper places. I would glue them down if that worked.

The middle class is begging for these gadgets and services. We are not only being buried alive by constant connection and information, our accumulation, too, is taking over and greatly complicating our lives.

It doesn’t matter that I’m attempting to go paperless by saying no to receipts at the register or reading my news and paying  bills online. It doesn’t matter that I spent last weekend eliminating clothes from my daughters’ closets and retiring enough garments to fill five supersize garbage compactor bags. Today, my husband is hauling them to his mother’s so that her nurse can ship the items to her poor family in the Philippines.

As I strive to reduce excess and clutter to make my home the simplified, functional haven I envision, I continue to do battle with the nagging phenomenon of  losing shit. Shit! I’m sick of it.

“Where’s the English paper I printed out?”

“Who moved my tax documents? They were on kitchen table!”

“Have you seen my new skinny jeans? I’ve looked in the hampers and in everyone’s rooms and I can’t find them.”

Yes, playing the surprisingly unrewarding game of lost and found remains the most aggravating symptom of the consumption syndrome known as affluenza, aptly defined by Wikipedia as “the portmanteau of the words affluence and influenza and a socially transmitted condition of overload resulting form the dogged pursuit of more. ”

First, allow me to point out that the mother is the sole proprietor of the house capable of locating lost articles. And once the lost treasure surfaces, I rarely see the results I would expect, i.e. a big hug and overwhelming expression of joy on their faces. “Goodness, Mother, how can I ever thank you?”

Take my husband, an intelligent eco man who acquires the least, loses the most, and can’t find objects that are literally under his nose. One daughter has inherited this same bizarre gene. The other daughter was once a registered bloodhound like her mama, but is now losing her shit, and has succumbed to the same bad habits as her influential sister such as getting undressed and leaving belongings strewn on the floor of various rooms. (They also both bite their fingers and devour chocolate like wild beasts, habits I link to the bizarre genes inherited from their mother.)

Every so often, like last weekend, I get on a roll and rifle through closets, sort my kitchen desk nook, organize the kids’ bins of art supplies, and perform the most dreaded and vapid chore of all – filing. Man oh man, does anyone loathe filing as much as I do?

I wish I could get that organizer lady back here to help me make new files and sort all the junk. She made professional labels on her label maker. She was great. I wanted to marry her. I want her to move in and take over and take me away. She’s Calgon to me, minus the harsh chemicals. But wouldn’t you know it, I don’t know where I put her number.

I try not to beat myself up about all of this – to follow the advice of modern clergy and therapists and be compassionate with myself. Sure, I’m a bonehead about keeping order, a little better than some of my most eccentric working friends, and not half as good as most stay-at-home moms.

It’s really a matter of overcoming the selfishness which leads to the over-consumption of material possessions, according to the author of the website My Super- Charged Life. As he sees it, the disease of deriving happiness from the next new toy “is a fruitless pursuit that will quickly leave a person depressed, disillusioned and broke.”

I feel depressed when I drop my girls off at their private school and pass the lost and found corner which is so generously stocked, it resembles a second hand store. Piles of forgotten lunch boxes with rotting contents, abandoned warm winter jackets, essential classroom binders and adorable stylish tee shirts: They all abound in the unsightly lost and found – glaring symbols of affluenza.

At the end of each month, a volunteer parent named Tila from Colombia ships the unclaimed items to the poor in her homeland. The children there are appreciative. Children who barely have enough food to eat don’t snub their cheese sandwiches and abandon lunch boxes on the black top. When you own just one winter jacket, you don’t leave it behind when you board the bus for home.

True, kids will always be forgetful. I was once a forgetful child. But unlike my daughters, I had less and kept track of it. My walk-in-closet contained about five pair of shoes and two toy boxes, one with Barbies, one with stuffed animals. It was easy to clean up after play. It was freeing.

Guess it all adds up to wanting to be free, again, free from the clutter and feeling that fleeting high from getting something new, a wired emotion we don’t feel by accident.

In the ’30s, Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays (known as the father of public relations) figured out how to mold public opinion via third party propaganda campaigns for selling everything from bacon and eggs promoted by the nation’s doctors to cigarettes, soap and books. This marketing strategy dictated to the receptive nation eventually became a familiar meme: Linking the accumulation of goods with feelings of happiness and success.

Ironically, I’m now finding happiness is attainable not by adding but subtracting. If anything should get lost, it is the brainwashing (and sometimes greenwashing) that the more we amass, the better we feel.

I strive to find the simplicity of less. Even more than ignorance, I suspect it is the route to bliss. In other words, it is time to bench Team Edward.

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Main Image: Evelyn is Here

Images: Jeffrey Beall, It’s a Purse Thing, Squidoo, Wikipedia

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