I was sitting on a bench in circular quay, scoffing down a rich slice of carrot cake, when suddenly a great, big seagull pounced and stole the cake right out of my hand. It dropped the cake on the floor in front of me, and began pecking at it nonchalantly. Full of indignant rage I spitefully snatched that piece of cake back. “I don’t think so!” I hollered.

Upon reflection, I feel a terrible sense of remorse. So typical of my species. How quick we are to defend what we feel is so righteously ours. How slow we are to remember that no one can ever, truly, OWN something.

***

“It’s horrible, we’re on the brink of disaster.”

Later I was describing to my lawyer friend a previewing screening I had attended that morning, of a documentary called The Age of Stupid. According to this loud, doomsday crier, unless there’s drastic changes put into place to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the next six years, we’re all going to be utterly fucked by 2055. By then I’ll be 72 years old. Probably still breathing.

After the seagull incident I had spent half an hour scribbling on the back of a paper bag a map of, “everything that’s wrong with the world,” and on the front, “everything that can be done to fix it.” I wanted to run the draft version by my friend.

“OK, so you know how when you buy a toaster and then it breaks, it’s cheaper to buy a new one than get it fixed. I mean that’s crazy, right? Your toaster probably just has one little part that’s degraded. But it’s cheaper to extract new raw materials out of the ground, get an exploited third world person to assemble it in a factory and then get it shipped thousands of miles to your local Myer or whatever. ALL THAT is cheaper than paying someone in your city to do a 30 minute fix-up job.”

“So, how about we ensure all goods are sold reflecting its true cost. The factory has to pay the third world person a reasonable wage, and provide good working conditions. Mining companies, factories and transportation companies are taxed for environmental degradation. And hike the cost of dumping things in landfill. Toasters will be a lot more expensive, but now people will demand toasters that last, and it’ll be cheaper to get it fixed than just chucking it out.”

My friend shook her head. “It will never happen. You’d need all these fair trade laws, and it’s just in no one’s interest.”

“Well then we’re all screwed,” I grumbled, absent-mindedly stroking a beautiful pair of soft pajama pants in the Peter Alexander store we were in.

“Let’s go, they’ve sold out of the hot water bottle cover I was looking for,” she replied. “Great place to have an anti-consumerism rant, Monica. Look at all these things, they’re great.”

***

Last night I went to the opening night of an indie art exhibition, which was being held in the foyer of the Sydney Saatchi & Saatchi office (a renowned global advertising agency.) Tonight the chairs and pool tables had been taken out, and replaced with Sydney’s young and ultra-hip, who were drinking beers, admiring the art and posing for social photographers, while a DJ spun records.

I was talking to a young, handsome banker.

“SO! WHAT IF, we decided we were all happy to both SPEND less and EARN less. Would the whole economy collapse?”

“Well, it’s more that China keeps only 1/3 of what it produces. Whereas economies like the US and Australian consume 2/3 more than what it produces, so what really needs to happen is China needs to begin consuming more of its own stuff.” (OK I think that’s what he said.)

“No, OK but wait. I have the environment in mind here, so what I’m wondering is, what if, IN TOTAL, the entire world; What if we all decided to consume less? Would the global economy collapse?”

He thought about it for a second. “Yes. I mean that’s how capitalism works. You’re constantly finding ways of becoming more efficient, and you have to consume more and more for it to function.”

“So we’re screwed?”

“I guess,” he replied.

***

My friend giggled as she ogled the the table next to us. In a semi-drunken stupor we had left the gallery and crossed the road to have dinner at Pancakes on the Rocks.

“Look at them, they all look EXACTLY the same! They’re even wearing the same belt!!” she whispered. I looked over at the other table and saw four girls sitting squashed together on the couch. They were all wearing tight tops, wide leather belts, with shiny straightened hair, and faces caked with orange makeup. Across the other side of the table was a beefy guy in an equally tight top, and gelled hair.

I looked back over at my friend and her clique of fellow artists. They were all wearing black, waist high skirts or tapered leg jeans, vintage boots, rock hair, and cultivated pale skin and ruby red lips.

“This,” I waved a finger in the direction of her friends, “is just as much a uniform as all that,” waving my finger back at the other table. “It’s just a different genre. Each to their own.”

“The only consistency is that we all use stuff to define ourselves.”

I was glum, and poured myself another glass of red wine.

By the end of dinner I was ranting again.

“I mean that’s ALL ANYONE DOES! Everyone wants to be famous, everyone wants to be rich, everyone wants to be a SOMEBODY! You’re part of a SCENE. You embody a LIFESTYLE. Is it really a community when all anyone is doing is pimping their own name? This perpetual CHASE for a projected image of SELF. I mean sometimes I’m guilty of it too, but it makes me sick. Shouldn’t it make us sick? We’re living in a city that’s totally obsessed with TRENDS.”

“I sure hope so!” my friend’s friend replied cheerfully. He owned a digital marketing company and could thank Sydney’s many trend-hunters for putting bread on his table.

I rose my glass to the air. “That’s it! Let’s just live in perpetual distraction. Let’s get drunk, have sex, get our teeth whitened, buy lots of stuff. Because it’s all going down the drain anyway, and really, who cares if it happens in 40 years, 5 years, or tomorrow. At least I’ll go out gorging on feelings of being sexy, and cool, and infamous, and loooved, and boy it was SO MUCH FUN while it lasted, right?”

I polished off the rest of the glass.

My friend politely, but pointedly looked at the bill and said, “so I think we all owe $40?”

***

There were some aspects of those stories that were tweaked. Perhaps I’ve come off sounding like a paranoid, chest-thumping, 90s-Naomi-Klein style, nutjob. But I truly AM concerned about the fact that consumerism is our religion, and it’s virtually BLASPHEMOUS to say, no, no, stop this can’t be right. And yet there’s something rotten to the core about the system.

Everything around us has been produced, assembled and built on CHEAP ENERGY. And that black, greasy oil stinks of the blood of future generations. And perhaps not even future generations. Perhaps we will be there to witness, first hand, the rising sea levels, the hurricanes, the unnatural deserts. We will be the victims of food shortages, and bloody wars fighting over the remaining resources. Soon, we’ll be drowning (literally) in our own mistakes.

And, on the flip side, so few care. Should we care? The universe doesn’t give a shit. The universe is silent and eternal and will do just fine with or without us, thank you very much. The earth doesn’t care either. The earth has, at one point, been molten fire, a rock of ice, a teeming planet of green life. What does it care if it’s drowned in water next, and whatever comes after that.

OK so kind of sucks for all the plants and animals. But let’s face it, they won’t really be sad. I mean they won’t know what’s going on.

No, the only people who are going to be sad is us. Sad that we so willfully committed suicide. Is it already too late? Are we already a lost cause? If so, what’s the point in worrying?

So get plastered kids! It’s last drinks.

***

UPDATE: And by the way, just to clarify, I think it’s human nature to like having or consuming nice stuff, and talking to each other about nice stuff. I’m sure tribal people used to make their own necklaces or hunting tools or whatever, and admire each others craftsmanship.

My point is that the whole thing has accelerated to the point in which it’s out of control, and we have far more than we truly need. You see what oil is, is millions of years of captured energy from the sun. And in only a few HUNDRED years we’ve sucked so much of it up and burned it off, not to mention done lots of other exploitative things to the environment and the third world, in order to give us lots and lots of things, and lots of comfort and convenience, relatively cheaply. And now none of our stuff means anything to us anymore. (This kid-friendly video called “the story of stuff” does a much better job of explaining.)

The system needs to be changed, and you should be a part of making it happen. Head to NotStupid.org and StoryOfStuff.com for ideas on how you can become involved.