Inhabitat

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Faking reality. Superficiality. Landfill stuff. Plastics and petroleum. Consider adjusting life so that it has more genuine substance, instead of trying to buy that substance. The first road leads to satisfaction and fulfillment, the latter to shallow pleasures. The joy of candles is the quality of their unstable light, which can’t be reproduced. The joy of fireflies is that they are temporal and again, visually “unstable” as they dance high and low in the twilight. True, fundamental beauty and pleasure comes from things that we CAN’T control: sunsets, blossoms, crashing surf, fire and fireflies…..Why do we have to try to own it? It is so much more satisfiying to share an evening with friends with candles that you’ve made, (which I’ve done; the pleasure is in the process); so much more simple joy in bringing your friends to a place with real fireflies, (definitely a more memorable experience)….Effort: one gets out of something what one puts into it.
And practically speaking, it costs a lot more money to acquire such unnecessary things. Faster, more, more, faster…….what for? Where does it get us?

As both a consumer product designer and a naturalist/environmentalist, I am having an increasingly difficult time with American’s need to produce more stuff that we just don’t need, and with my contribution to this malady. The factories I use are in Europe, where their life doesn’t revolve around SHOPPING, and I actually feel a sense of relief, a lack of shopping pressure, when I’m there; life is about family, friends, and great food. Hey - I love manufacturerd beauty: Maserati’s Vanquish, Macs, Fortuny; but it always begets more, and it all eventually ends up as trash. But conscience compels me to put my money where my mouth is, so I have closed my business, have stopped designing “things”, and have moved on to designing ideas; perhaps, beautiful ideas.

Hopefully, those of us who preach to the environmental choir are not doing the opposite back in the nave.

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Well said Frances – perhaps you’d like to share some of your beautiful ideas one day?

As an environmental architect living in the UK I regularly browse Inhabitat for inspiration, but COME ON! Let’s have a little more critical thinking please. The implication that these featured products are ‘safer’ than candles and pumpkins is bizarre – do we understand what goes in to making a Ni-Cad battery, and the legacy they leave behind when they are thrown away?

True, one candle can cause death and destruction, but with risk comes responsibility and with responsibility very often comes reward. From time-to-time we choose to let our six year old son carry a candle in a candle-holder through our darkened house to the bathroom and enjoy the grin on his face as the shadows leap around him. But we also make sure he understands the need for care and what to do if something goes wrong – and we don’t just leave him to it – one of us takes the time to ‘be around’ just in case something does goes wrong.

We live in and are often shaped by a frenetic, risk averse, consumerist climate, but that doesn’t mean we have to unthinkingly accept it or blindly follow it.