Article

Comment

Economics

Sustainability

26 November 2024

4 min read

Black Friday: don’t shop, try stewarding instead

We're so fallible to consumer culture. Here's how to counter it.

Rosie Phillips

Rosie studies theology in Oxford and is currently training to be a vicar.

A phone screen is held up, showing a shopping page, behind a window displays a Black Friday Sale banner.

CardMapr.nl on Unsplash.

Have you noticed how many times in the last 24 hours you’ve been targeted or tempted by a Black Friday marketing campaign?

It’s estimated that we can see anywhere from 50 to 400 adverts per day - on TV, billboards, online, and, more than ever, through social media. I’ve never felt more seen and known by the Instagram algorithm, and many of us have experienced items popping up on our feeds which we were talking about with friends only hours before. Is it possible to resist such incessant and elaborate marketing schemes?

In the lead up to Black Friday this year, I’ve been looking out for a new vacuum cleaner (the rock-and-roll life of a thirty-something year-old). Having done all the research, I’m now poised to cash in on the discounts, regularly refreshing my Argos and Amazon tabs for the latest prices.

But, as I’ve been comparing the relative pros and cons of cordless versus cylinder vacuums (and marvelling at the development of anti-hair wrap technology), it’s been difficult not to have my interest piqued by various other products being put under my nose by these websites, too.

And difficult not to feel like, if I don’t act quickly, I’m going to miss out on an offer that’ll not come around again. It’s almost as if these marketing executives know how my brain is going work - even before I go online. But are we humans really as transparent as that?

Netflix’s new documentary, Buy Now? The Shopping Conspiracy, says that we are. It profiles several ex-insiders from the world’s biggest brands, who expose the manipulative tricks used by these corporations to make us buy more, and the extent to which our desire for endless consumption has been cultivated and capitalised on by design.

It seems that we humans, evolved and intelligent as we like to believe ourselves, are still fallible to serve the things which were designed to serve us. And the consequences are far-reaching. Online shopping may have dehumanised the consumer experience, but we remain connected to people around the world by global supply chains, and it is individuals and communities whose livelihoods are most dependent on the availability and quality of natural resources, and who live closest to the land, who reap the harmful effects of our incessant buying habits.

Hazardous e-waste, for example (including discarded laptops, phones, and TVs), is rising by millions of tonnes annually. The UK is a particularly bad offender for illegally exporting toxic e-waste around the world, dumping it in landfills where it releases toxic substances such as mercury, zinc, and lead into local water and soil supplies.

Back here in the UK, we can feel like such small cogs in such a huge, capitalist machine, that a lot of this seems beyond the realms of our human agency.

There is certainly value in being savvy with our spending power as consumers. In doing the research to get the best Black Friday deals, as we tighten the purse strings and navigate what has become a protracted and painful cost of living crisis for many. It can be hard for Christmas not to feel like an unavoidably expensive time of year.

But, perhaps there is also an opportunity to take small, subversive acts of resistance against this dehumanising consumer culture. Actions which reclaim our humanity and human agency, and which recognise our global interconnectedness.

For example, maybe you could resist the urge to impulse buy something this weekend, by stepping away from the screen to make a cup of tea or go for a walk outside, before clicking ‘Pay Now’.

Perhaps we could get better at comparing companies’ supply chains and ethical brand ratings, using our spending power to support those which align best with our values.

And, when we’re making a purchase, let’s take a moment to be grateful for the things we already have, the items we’re buying, and the people who made them.

The Christian faith invites us to reframe how we see our money and belongings through the lens of stewardship. It’s an underrated principle in today’s context. Stewardship goes beyond just thinking about how we spend our income, to the inherent responsibility we have as humans to look after the world around us, recognising that the earth’s resources are not ones we are entitled to, but are gifts which sustain life.

The principle of stewardship makes it impossible to hide behind a screen and to ignore the impact which our spending decisions have on people and communities around the world, however far removed from our lives they seem. It invites us to use our money and resources to invest in things which will serve us - and others - well, and tells the world that it matters that we challenge systems which perpetuate economic and environmental injustice.

And, if I happen to miss out on that vacuum cleaner while I’m out for a walk this weekend, at least it’s less than a month until the Boxing Day sales hit our screens.

Column

Assisted dying

Care

Comment

14 November 2024

4 min read

Proposed euthanasia safeguards insult our NHS

We must defend a collective sense of care and generosity.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A gable end mural depicts a nurse in scrubs and a mask turning and looking towards the viewer.

A mural of an NHS nurse during COVID, Manchester.

Mural Republic

It was, I believe, the late political satirist Simon Hoggart who coined the Law of the Ridiculous Reverse, which held that, if the opposite of a statement is plainly absurd, then it was not worth making in the first place.

This law comes to mind when Labour MP Kim Leadbeater promises that her Assisted Dying Bill will have the “strictest safeguards in the world”, one of which is that those patients who have ordered their fatal dose “would be allowed to change their mind at any time.”

Where, exactly, has it ever been suggested that an individual, having asked for an assisted death, would not be allowed to change their mind? I’m just wondering which legislator or medical professional has proposed that once a lethal draught has been prescribed then there is no turning back.

I’m struggling to picture the circumstance in which a terminally ill patient is pinned down and killed, the last words that they hear being: “I’m sorry Mrs Simpkins, but everyone’s gone to a lot of trouble. You asked for it and you’re jolly well going to get it.”

This is important because, apparently, being able to change your mind about asking for help to kill yourself is one of the strictest safeguards in the world. I hope Ms Leadbeater will forgive me for pointing out that this doesn’t really stack up.

And what’s serious about it is that it’s also a massive straw man argument. The clear and rather devious implication is that one of the arguments being made against the introduction of an assisted suicide law is that patients won’t be able to change their minds about it, which I think we can all accept simply isn’t a fact at all. It’s absurd – a Ridiculous Reverse.

So I’ll defend the NHS with a religious fervour. To my mind, healthcare is a holy mission. We meddle in law with the Hippocratic Oath at our very deep peril.

It’s also hugely contemptuous of the medical profession in general and rude to the NHS in particular. That’s because there’s a snide impression behind Leadbeater’s comment there may be hundreds of budding Harold Shipman out there, but her powerful safeguards are going to protect us from them.

We’re in danger of becoming inured to this kind of insult from politicians directed at the NHS. And it’s worth exploring why they might think we need to be protected from unscrupulous doctors and nurses. In this case, one possible reason is that the NHS isn’t being particularly helpful in giving the euthanasia enthusiasts what they want.

Doctors and their staff have plenty of ethical objections to assisted suicide. But leave those aside for a moment. At the practical level, the NHS has made it clear that it doesn’t have the infrastructure to operate a policy of assisted deaths safely. And it can’t afford to set one up. So a government that introduces assisted suicide is going to have to organise and regulate its own assisted death agency.

“Oh,” the assisted dying lobbyists seem to exclaim, “we’d presumed you’d do as you’re told.” Just hand out the hemlock. Take your instructions from the legislature.

But the NHS is better than that. And it’s that kind of high principle that so infuriates feckless politicians. It was the late Nigel Lawson who said, somewhat ruefully, that the NHS “is the closest thing the English have to a religion”. The right wing of politics regularly tells us it’s time to renounce that religion.

To worship the NHS as a religion would, literally, be idolatrous. But it’s not so to acknowledge its religious qualities. Just look at the word – the Latin religio means something like “good faith”, the essence of who we are, what makes us good.

The NHS, in its post-war incarnation, has been central to who we are as a people and what defines us. It’s something to do with our collective sense of care and generosity to one another. Its members, like our national Church, make up a single body.

This is not to co-opt the NHS as the medical wing of the Church. It’s no part of the NHS’s brief to proselytize – rather the reverse; Christian medical staff have been in deep disciplinary trouble for evangelising. It is a profoundly secular organisation.

So the NHS emphatically isn’t in the business of propagating the gospel. But that’s not to say that we can’t be in the same business. Many priests have stories of their most affirming work being in the company of people of other faiths or of none.

The NHS’s proud heritage is to offer treatment free to anyone at the point of access. Put another way, it will seek to heal anyone who comes to it. I make no apology for saying that sounds familiar.

So I’ll defend the NHS with a religious fervour. To my mind, healthcare is a holy mission. We meddle in law with the Hippocratic Oath at our very deep peril.

And when NHS professionals tell us where we can stick our assisted suicides, I respectfully suggest we give it our solemn attention, rather than patronisingly offering a Law of the Ridiculous Reverse.