How many things did you purchase this year for others? How much did you spend on yourself? With the total amount of money you spent on yourself or others, how much influence can you wield around the world?
Despite my yearning to purchase a few items on my wishlist, I’ve painfully managed to refrain from doing so as well as from purchasing items for friends and family primarily because I want to see if I can push myself towards a state of mind where I do not feel the need to be purchasing massive number of gifts for everyone. I did receive a couple of small presents this year although I am trying to reduce that number.
This isn’t for a particular cause or some action against consumerism but rather my attempt at determining my level of freedom. The freedom that is the consequence of wanting fewer things in the world. We all have things that we need (to live) and want (to enjoy live comfortably). By no means am I preaching an ideology but rather this is to test my own ability to control the consumer in me — to be able to say no to purchasing something that I do not need but think would be neat to have, or to be able to wait until something is drastically lower in price.
It is funny that I am in marketing. Many people including my friends think of scams and very profit-driven individuals when the term marketing is mentioned. I think the problem is that the ones who are key in creating that perception are businesses (and individuals) with little regard for the power of other individuals and for that matter, consumers or the customer — maybe even society as a whole. I used to be a sceptic of marketing — until I realized that marketing is more than the sale.
Marketing is the ability to freely exchange ideas with an audience. Ideas have a purpose but the individuals have the power to decide which idea they want to embrace. There is one I embraced just recently.
I ran across an article detailing how the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project is doing. A few months ago, my sister and I decided to donate to the Give One Get One campaign to provide a child out there with a pretty spiffy little computer that uses very little power, is able to provide the child with nearly all the functions that we have on our power-hungry computers, and to also try out one of these laptops for ourselves and see how good it really is. Unfortunately, we haven’t received it yet so I can’t really speak on that topic yet. But I am happy to hear that children in Peru are beginning to reap the benefits of the initiative.
Merry Christmas World – I hope for the best to come in 2008!
*** An amusing look at the past and present.
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