1. What have you learned from the 20-minutes video?
2. As a consumer, what do you think you can do to change the situation?
3. If you're interested in environmental issues, you might be interested in this, too. Also, the story of bottle water will be on at March 22.
Topic contributed by Judy. Next turn is Joe.
I think that there is still much we can do. After watching this video, we can know that before we go shopping, we should know exactly what we want. Is that we really need? Or we just follow the trend blindly? We just take too much from the earth. We keep wasting the natural resource. We consume the natural resource from the third world seriously. We make the people there have to go to the factory to work for the toxic products. They have no choice to work in the unfriendly environment. We create too much toxic goods. The more we buy them, the more harm we do to the world. Although recycle can release this bad situation, it is still not enough. We create lots of trashes, and the trash is sent to be burnt or to be buried to the underground. We can destroy our own home through these two ways! The final goal we should reach is to create 0 wastes. We should reuse everything as possible.
回覆刪除After watching “The Story of Stuff,” I was very upset. If there were no such clip to reveal the truth, I guess I would never know what I’ve done to other people in the third countries when I was shopping. At first, I thought it would be perfectly fine since I’m a good global villager that I do recycling, turn off the electronic equipments when I’m not using, use the minimalized of water when showering. However, I recalled that once I read an article named “Taking Shorter Showers Doesn't Cut It: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change” (http://tinyurl.com/lpkak9) saying that personal change does not make the politics change.
回覆刪除I began to search on the Internet for more information about what the corporations have done and what our government has been up to. It is very surprising that our govern-ment uses various ways to keep the corporations stay in Taiwan so that people won’t lose their jobs, but at the same time the government is allowing the factories to pollute our isl-and! The controversies on the Central Taiwan Science Park have completely show us how arrogant our government is that they ignore the value of agriculture and would rather beg the corporations to stay in Taiwan, pollute Taiwan. (see the website http://tinyurl.com/yavevw3 )
Back to the topic, as a consumer, I think the upmost thing I can do is to think twice before I purchase the merchandize. The reason why we are in such situation is that Capi-talism creates the desires for everything, which thus leads to over-consumption. If we can stop and think more, there won’t be so much waste in our world. The concept of sustaina-ble development is also promoting the same philosophy: to satisfy the needs without de-priving the future generation to meet their needs. A better world comes from our care and love. Make sure we buy the things we really NEED.
Judy Chou, Eng dept. FJU
Capitalism has become the main stream in the world economic system these centuries. From our point of view, we often take the capitalism for granted and thereby have the distorted image of values in the daily life. In general, capitalism brings about convenience, contention, prosperity, and advancement in our minds. However, why do we have such preconceived ideas? The reason is that, in most cases, the information we received has particular standpoint in the rear. Therefore, what we need to do is to confont the covered and sacrificed costs. Actually, the more glorious living standard the capitalism brings about, the more extended costs we tend to ignore. As the capitalism continues to develop, the externalized costs will be considerable.
回覆刪除After watching the clip, I do realize how severe the modern consuming habits cause the environment where we live. We cannot help but to ask if the merchandise is indeed indispensable for us. Or we just pointless cater to other people's values on the goods. We are supposed to know that the resources we have nowadats are limited and need to be cherished. We do share the same earth with our future generation. Do we want to be hardhearted enough to remain misused lands for them to inhabit? Then, they complain how crucial their ancestors were to abuse and destroy the originally beatiful earth. We should keep this probable assumption in mind. Next time when we go to shop something, we should consult our conscience before buying things.
Dear Martin,
回覆刪除Yes, I agree with you. Recently I found out that actually I have less need than I thought. I don’t really need an iPhone; a simple cell phone with the functions of dialing phone calls and text messaging are enough. I don’t really need fancy clothing; plain clothing to keep me warm is enough. I don’t really need that much meat in my diet; in fact, more vegetable is better for my health.
Life can be very simple. And surprisingly, when I look back into my life, I found out that all the needs come from advertising. By receiving the messages from the advertisements, I somehow learn that I have to get some certain product to become “fancy” or “cool.” However, it is not true. The value of a person does not depend on his/her accessories but his/her personality and what s/he believes in. I think as a consumer, what we can do is buy the things we really NEED. So that there will be less waste and we can live a better simple life. =]
Thank you for your sharing. =]
Judy Chou, Eng Dept. FJU
Dear Alfee,
回覆刪除Have you ever heard “placement marketing” or “product placement” (置入性行銷)? I think this is the most successful part of Capitalism. Placement marketing is actually a brilliant idea. Instead of the advertisement we saw during the short break time of the program, the advertisers make their company labels or logos constantly show up on the program naturally. Whenever we watch a TV show or a movie, we might or might not notice the handsome actor is wearing a baseball cap with a huge Yankee mark on it, and the beautiful actress is playing with her new Swarovski ring. Also, it is very common for us to see a special focus take on the Nokia phone the leading actor is using. These are all product placement. Gradually, when people think of cell phone, they might first think of Nokia; when speaking of accessory, people might think of Swarovski. This is exactly how placement marketing works: the advertisers want you to remember their brand, unconsciously.
I believe that we are more or less being influenced by the message we received (either from advertisements or other inputs). However, it is important to keep ourselves awake. What I’m trying to say is that people have independent thoughts and free wills to make decisions, and we shouldn’t be confused by the flood of information we receive every day.
Thanks for your sharing. =]
Judy Chou, Eng Dept. FJU