Forgetting frugality

OPINION

My eldest brother's first job in America was in a supermarket. Among his many chores, he found one particularly distasteful: throwing expired food into the garbage bin nightly, then pouring Clorox on top to discourage scavengers and the poor.

Like the rest of us who immigrated from Vietnam, my brother hadn't yet bought into the consumerist culture, and it pained him to see so much go to waste. Without fail he would call friends and relatives to come over and salvage whatever they wanted before he poured the chemical. After a while the supermarket manager caught on to this scheme, and my brother was soon out of a job.

Barely a teenager in America, I remember hauling some of the supermarket's expired food home to my family with giddiness. What Americans threw away was sustenance back home in Vietnam. It shocked me to see so much wealth going to waste.

What the child marveled at, however, causes the adult to fret. The commercial culture — the culture of wanting more, of consuming — requires continuous acquisition and is built upon the concept of disposable goods.

Not long ago, frugality was a virtue. Now, two thirds of our economy is based on consumption. In the age of melting glaciers and rising sea levels, in an age where coral reefs disappear, and ever more hurricanes ravage our cities — in the age, that is, of global warming — our way of life has become unsustainable and has created an unprecedented crisis on a planetary scale.

"When consumption becomes the very reason economies exist, we never ask, 'How much is enough?' 'Why do we need all this stuff?' and 'Are we any happier?'" writes David Suzuki, author of The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature.

More Americans are beginning to ask these same questions after Katrina. SUV sales are down, and recycling is up. But materialism is a powerful force, and when elevated into a concept called consumerism, refined by the genius of advertising and given the title "American Dream," few can resist. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of our economy. We know we need to change, but like many an overweight person who wants to diet and exercise, we as a nation haven't found the will to break the habit.

My own family and relatives too have moved on from our humble beginnings as refugees in America to become middle-class Americans. The latest technology, the latest trend in fashion, the newest cars, the best laptop — we've got to have them all.

Last night, walking home, I saw two old Chinese ladies looking for aluminum cans and plastic bottles in a garbage bin behind a restaurant near my home. One of the workers came out and yelled at the old ladies to stop.

As I watched the two scurry away into the shadows, I thought of my own humble past. But I fear that, with the way things go, with global warming threatening to undermine our civilization, those two old scavengers may well represent our own retro-future. *

Andrew Lam

A longer version of this commentary first ran on newamericamedia.org. Lam is a New America Media editor and the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora (Heyday Books, 2005).