1000 Flowers for the Planet - #516 Avoid Fads
Fads are a widely
shared enthusiasm for something, and of short duration. Manufacturers love fads
because it means they can keep taking your money time after time after time as
one fad finishes and a new one begins. Fads can be things like buying the
latest exercise equipment (each new machine is ‘superior’ to the previous and
will get you those abs without any hard work at all – yeah right!), or the
latest kitchen equipment (the ‘must have’ new colours; the machine that slices,
dices and chops or the newest coffee maker), or then there are the clothes
fads, the biggest industry of them all, which dictates that every six months
you need a completely new wardrobe and all the previous season should be tossed
(tossed where? I ask). Manufacturers know that the biggest bucks come from
children (well, their parents hand over the money) with fads such as collectors
editions, merchandise for the latest hit movie, swap/collector cards, virtual
pets, pogs, rubber bands in crazy shapes – each generation has a long list.
Fads are
also called ‘crazes’ and that leads to the idea that they are ‘crazy’ – a crazy way to waste your hard
earned money, a crazy way to use natural resources, a crazy way to create
pollution, a crazy way to generate carbon emissions, a crazy way to produce
landfill and a crazy way to develop relationships with others and the world in
which we live. Think of all the valuable things that could be saved or prevented
if more of us avoided fads.
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