More effective shopping

One of the practical approaches proposed here for more sensible and responsible living is “more effective shopping”.

‘More effective’ shopping means acquiring just right amount and type of the tools for living – that is, goods and services that you really need. These should be of the highest quality but bought at a cost that is lowest, not necessarily initially but over their useful lifetimes. Consequently, one should have to work less hours in each year to achieve the same amount of material satisfaction.

Of course there are values in life beyond material satisfaction. As Ivan Illich has written, people need not only to obtain things, they need above all the freedom to make things among which they can live, to give shape to them according to their own tastes, and to put them to use in caring for and about others. But the time freed up by not working excessive hours to buy poor value items will help provide the additional freedom required for these higher goods.

Updating Panapek for the 21st Century

This blog is dedicated to the great thinker and teacher Victor Papanek. He wrote a wonderful book, Design for the Real World, that made a big impression when it came out in the 1971. It attacked all things that were tawdry, unsafe, frivolous or useless. It seemed to be a breakthrough then because it proposed a blueprint for a better World. Now in the 21st Century, Papanek’s way of thinking seems even more relevant as a guide for sensible and responsible living when too many people with too much pointless activity and worthless stuff is damaging our planet.

But the better-designed world that Papanek hoped for has not come about. And intellectual fashions have changed. Now the “green” movement has taken over as the standard bearer against a society that seems satiated with too many goods that are over-specified, quickly become redundant and prone to faults for which no viable repairs are available.

Unfortunately, although the ideas of the green movement are well-meaning, in their undiluted state they are not offering enough practical options for the majority of people. Most of us live in towns where the already planned environment does not lend itself to much "green" change. And we also still have to make necessary long journeys. Mostly we just want to enjoy all the material pleasures of a 21st Century lifestyle, but work less and still do our bit to save the planet for our children and grandchildren.

This blog aims to revisit Papanek's approach to responsible living with the aim of making it even more relevant to a World that is now 36 years on from the publication of Design for The Real World.