Moral Obsolescence — The Question of Awareness
(by Nikolaus Manoussakis)
How our societal handling of resources, people and the environment reflects our present state of consciousness.
The somewhat bulky concept of “planned obsolescence” has gained recognition in recent years, not only through documentation such as “Kaufen für die Müllhalde” on Arte. It describes the practice of producing material goods with an artificially limited life. In this article, I would like to deal with the moral questions behind this development — and to point out alternatives.
Before a product such as a mobile phone end up on our shelves, it goes through countless steps in the production process. Thus the plastic parts are provided by suppliers from the mineral oil industry, the “rare earths” built into electronics come from mines e.g. from Africa. Components from all parts of the earth are shipped and, for the most part, assembled in large Chinese factories.
We, as consumers, have absolutely no knowledge of production conditions, the ecological consequences of production, the extent of labor and the human destinies behind them. It is also “clearly” not in the interests of corporations to remedy this — a madness, to which we have come to be accustomed.
The illogicality need only be great enough and be repeated by all economic actors in order to be considered “normal” and conclusive. We are so poisoned collectively that we regard this as a given and accepted element of our economic order.
Every mass product becomes a kind of black box. A fragment of materialized market logic — or should we rather say: “illogicalness?”
How is a consumer to exercise his power when there is no information about the product? Much worse, how is he to do it if all market actors apply the same principles? Unfortunately, we have arrived at a situation where proper action becomes increasingly difficult and in many places virtually impossible. Everything is subjected to the constraints of profit maximization.
Meanwhile the artificial shortening of a product’s life span is no longer the manufacturer’s only possible strategy to artificially produce demand. Rather, a kind of psychological mechanism of obsolesence can be observed.
New products, which differ only very slightly from the previous generation, are hammered into the consumer’s consciousness, partly with astronomical advertising budgets. The resulting market behavior is particularly evident in the automotive sector. New models that, in a nutshell, also have four tires and a steering wheel, are celebrated every passing year, in endless repetition, as the unprecedented zenith of the driving experience.
Cars are actually sold almost exclusively through the emotional factor. Much like many other products, they have increasingly become status symbols — a kind of badge to be associated with a certain class or group. The actual benefit of the products has, incredibly, become almost irrelevant.
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