Got to say, in the Indian village I was in, loads of the young people wanted to be consumers. They aspired to having Nike trainers, DVD players, Pepsi, Lays Crisps and expensive mobile phones. They just didn’t have the money to get any of the stuff.

Anyone who has visited a ‘poor’ country I doubt will be able to say that on the whole, the people there do not lust after wealth, nor do they have social ills as we do etc. Pre-industrial society is nothing to write home about. It has as many social problems as we do, and on top of that it has the incredible poverty and associated societal ills as well. The factors that people might lose as a result of growing consumerism (often cited are notions of community, spirituality etc - tell that to the millions of girls from developing countries who are sold into the slave trade) are nothing compared to the gains (good health, improved education, potential political stability and - most importantly to some -rights).

The Dalai Lama is a good example. He understands that consumerism can corrupt, but he will also often state that so can ignorance, and ignorance is too often a side-affect of poverty. The Dalai Lama is an entreprenuer of the highest order - he is the architect of the most affluent refugee community in the world.

Consumerism drives everything. It can be truly awful, but ironically it is the only thing (or the only system we yet have) that can provide the environment in which good things - NHS, universal education, political and social mobility - can happen. You only get an NHS because a country produces enough capital to pay for it; you only get political reform when a sector of society is educated enough to know their rights, and development paves the way for education; you only get the technologies that can help to preserve the environment when you’re society is technologically progressive, and its people have enough free time away from the daily grind with which to even contemplate preserving the environment.

There’s no such thing as a free meal. With consumerism, we get overwhelmingly good things, but we also get bad things. Nothing is the history of the world has ever been entirely good, never having had side-effects. That’s not the way things happen. Tenzin and Paul have got the key to it all: consumerism is not inherently good, and it ain’t inherently bad. Our attitude towards it is. When we’ve had a philanthropic attitude towards its use, we’ve obtained the most wonderful things about our society; yet when we’ve fallen towards the dark side, overwhelmingly bad things have resulted. Maybe even George Lucas was right…

To leave Africa without the option to even grasp at the opportunity to realise the benefits of consumerism, simply because there will be side-effects, is no excuse to allow mass poverty and societal disorder to continue.

But anyway, the whole ‘if we get them out of poverty they’ll become consumers’ issue. Very interesting. I saw a similar thing recently - an article by Shell in the financial section of one of the broadsheets reassuring us how wonderful it was that they’re working to make poor countries richer by giving them industry and the cynical part of me went ‘yes, but at what cost…?’ But then it’s easy for me as a liberal rich westerner to say such things. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that simply being a consumer is not necessarily a bad thing, but the selfish greed that so often accompanies consumerism is.

To quote the Dalai Lama:
Llack of contentment - or greed - sows the seed of envy and aggressive competitiveness, and leads to a culture of excessive consumerism. The negative atmosphere this creates becomes the context for all kinds of social ills which bring suffering to members of that community.’

Or to quote St Paul: Llove of money is the root of all evil’.

Or am I being over-simplistic and naive again?