The conservationists

Sad but true. If they could, billions of poor people around the world will probably go to their local Walmarts (or national equivalent) and buy thousands of gadgets, unnecessary home appliances, their 128 toilet paper rolls super savings package, four or five 3D plasma TVs and so on. They will probably also own a huge SUV, eat a lot of stake, and will for sure yell ‘drill, baby, drill’ at their preferred political gatherings.

It would be an egregious effort in global positivism to think that the ‘conservationist’ practices of most of the world’s poor come from anything but sheer necessity. Their TVs last 30 years and their cars 15, and their radios count their age in the decades, primarily because there is no money for new stuff.

Yet, there is a part of the common folk, at least in Latin America, that cherishes their ‘conservationist’ practices. People that take genuine pride in their magical abilities to make things last forever. These people develop a deep sense of ownership of their stereo sets, for example. They have opened their TVs and soldered new transistors or changed vacuum tubes; they have repaired their own stoves and know how they work; they can identify mechanical mischief by ear; washing machines, fans, and cars are eternal beings in their hands.

Some will argue that in a way it would be more environmentally efficient to have new appliances and cars because they are generally more energy efficient, but the answer to that legitimate concern is:

a) not all new appliances use less energy than older appliances (although LCD and plasma TV’s are more energy efficient than old TVs in a per square inch basis, the fact that new TVs are generally larger in square inches makes them use more energy than the average traditional TV set).

b) there comes a point in which from so many changes/repairs and upgrades done to any given appliance one has to ask if the appliance is ‘itself’ anymore. After all, even the human body almost completely regenerates itself -at a cellular level- in around 7 years.

c) many of the repairs and upgrades that these conservationist do are done precisely to make things more efficient, to do more with less, do things faster, or expands any given appliance’s capacity.

That is how I have SEEN it work in Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina and so on. It is probably how it works in other developing parts of the world as well.

There is a higher-culture component to all of this as well.

And there is a lesson to be learned from this attitude. Once things are brought forth to the world, once they are here with us, progress is not necessarily attained by developing new things, but there is a value in letting things be useful and operable for as long as it is reasonable. True, most people in the developing world would rather have a new 300in super duper plasma LCD web capable 3D-ish TV, but learning and knowning how to make that early 80’s TV set last, a skill most commonly found amongst the world’s poor, is a value in and for itself. For once, you are not buying the latest Sanyo crap that is soon to be outdated by the newest Sanyo hot crap. Two, while making things last you learn about how things work, you acquire a better understanding of mechanics, electronics, physics, the behavior of plastic, cables, etc. and that is even democratic because, as they claim that Foucault said somewhere, knowledge is power. Three, my late 70’s rotary dial TV set keeps me active, and a bit healthier, for it just doesn’t recognize some of the remote control’s commands, and yes, I have to stand up and turn down the volume myself. Weird, but nice. That makes me feel like I am in control.