Conscious human, conscious consumption

The concept Conspicuous Consumption has been around since it was 1st coined by the economist Thorstein Veblen to describe spending intended to display ones wealth (whether real or implied) more recently there has been a move towards a claim for “Conscious Consumption” namely “The emergence of new conscious consumption dynamics means the informed and influential individual balances personal satisfaction with sustainable living”. However I was chatting with Pippa Palmer recently and she proposed an interesting new concept as it relates to our consumption – not just to consider the ethical basis of our products but also the literal amount consumed encapsulated by the phrase “conscious human, conscious consumption”. To this end we should consider how much “stuff” we use and to measure whether it is all needed. For example some customers are moved on to meters by their energy supplier that requires cash top ups to work – this has the result that users of these meters are far more “conscious” of exactly how much energy they use. Similarly people on PAYG phones tend to monitor their usage far more exactly than those of us on unlimited talk packages. Pippa makes a useful suggestion and nicely encapsulates an idea in a neat phrase. I have been wondering how much less energy I would use if I was more "conscious" of how much I was using in my home, car or work place. Clearly smart meters will go some way in helping me make conscious efforts to reduce my consumption, but they do not strictly limit my consumption in the manner that a cash meter does nor does it suggest the resource is finite in quite the same way. Only my acting more “consciously” – in the manner of a thinking sentiment being rather than gorging on freely available resources will I truely limit my consumption. So less consumption requires a shift in my thinking rather than just the utilisation of high tech monitoring equipment. Living “consciously” does not require an ethical examination of the source of every constituent part of everything we buy – but that would certainly help – rather an awareness of the mind. For me this means self reflection and examination as to how to balance need over want, desire over impact and the display of wealth over utility. This doesn’t mean I am going to don sack cloth and live in a caravan, but surely if we all more closely examined what we do consume on a daily basis we would all find we could manage with less with only a modest impact on our lives. Certainly this is a position of privilege to blithely talk about trimming our gross consumption when some people can’t even afford to cook the food they buy, or are given – however that does not mean we should not all taking a moment to reflect if we are being conscious or conspicuous?