Whenever we travel or shop we will come across things that
are stupid, objects that if we stopped for a second to consider would have us
screaming in outrage at their stupidity and demanding things change? But we have been sleepwalking into the present,
so it needs a fresh pair of eyes to provide ‘another way to look at things’.
We are not stupid, just that many of the things we buy, use, that we drive, ways we travel, how we organise ourselves, are actually quite stupid. If we were starting afresh we might see their stupidity but our world has been constructed incrementally, piecemeal, shoring up the gaps like the roof of a squatter camp that has become permanent. When things evolve that way we lose the opportunity to implement common sense and react against the stupid things.
What is stupid? Detergents sold in plastic pump bottles that could happily work for 16 years yet are dumped in landfill after 16 weeks; having being made out of three different plastics and metal springs so they can never be recycled. Cars that do 120, 150, 175mph when 95% of our journeys never exceed 40mph are stupid. A car designed around the use we actually put it to would reach 50mph, could weigh a quarter it does now, go four times further on a gallon and last forever because it can be upgraded with better emission engines. Kerbs stones 4 inches high that separate kids walking to school and a 40 ton lorry doing 30mph, that’s surely stupid? High on the stupidity list are unique wall chargers for every electrical item we buy, each with random plugs sizes and voltages so in the end we all have a tangled drawer of orphans. Years ago someone suggested that the mini USB plug and 5 volts would be adopted as a universal standard, so obvious, so sensible, but why has it not happened?
Most packaging is high on the stupidity list. Take for example those deodorant bottles that shrink from their generous ball to a disappointingly emaciated 20cc container. To make it hold 100cc might only cost 1p more in plastic and 2p in contents, so little you would think it stupid not do so; four million fewer bottles going to landfill or about 15 articulated lorry loads every year. But to the manufacturer this represents commercial suicide; larger packaging means fewer sales. Now you begin to see the mindset behind terms like ‘new, better, improved, new formula, longer lasting’; brand was invented to raise the apparent value of your product, through brand the manufacturer conspires with the consumer to weight brand values against wider common sense and that is how we end up with stupid things.
Nobody tells manufacturers what is stupid, quite the reverse, we allow them advertising to persuade us to pay extra to buy stupidity. Did a consumer ever say that the soap bar wrapped in waxed paper that dissolves to nothing is stupid; no, I prefer soap in a plastic bottle with a pump that cannot be recycled! But this is free market economics, consumer driven, manufacturer led; can you argue consumerism is stupid?
Even if we had the courage can we do anything about it? Well if web marketing is as powerful as some believe it then if we can agree with what we don’t want we can use it try and end it. And then move from that to what we do want which is much much harder.
So is that it? Do we simply accept that market forces got us here so market forces will get us out?
Do we have the courage to choose a way forward rather than be led to it by a set of forces we are increasingly ill at ease with?
