Oregon Humanities

The Stuff of Citizenship

I’m sure most of you have heard of Annie Leonard—creator and host of the insanely popular short animated film The Story of Stuff (now at more than 10 million views worldwide). Leonard has written a book of the same name and is currently on national tour. This last Monday she presented at Powell’s, and I went to go hear what she had to say.

It was standing room only, and even though I got there early, I was one of the people crammed against the bookshelves in the back. Thankfully, she didn’t read from the book but instead talked about the story behind The Story of Stuff, her own journey of fascination with systems of production and consumption. Leonard was funny and genuinely excited about her work. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that the way she narrates the film The Story of Stuff is not put-on. That’s the real her.

I became especially interested when she started talking about happiness and its relation to stuff—that as our consumption has grown, our happiness levels have gone in the opposite direction. Leonard and others believe that what really makes us happy is not things but rather—after our basic needs are met—more engaged and healthy social relationships, feeling a part of something outside of ourselves, and contributing in partnership with others to the greater good: basically, the moving parts of citizenship. As Leonard talked about the two sides of ourselves—the consumer self that’s constantly stimulated and the citizen self that’s often atrophied because of a lack of engagement—it brought me back to Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2009.

It was well over a year ago, but I could still vividly recall the excitement I felt about participating in a day of service, prompted by President Obama’s call to action on this day. A friend’s mom had created the project A Block for Barack, in which people all over Portland committed to cleaning up one city block. I decided that this was how I would spend a part of my day.

Armed with a trash bag and rubber gloves, a coworker and I hit the streets to beautify a tiny section of our city. It took us longer than I thought it would; I was surprised at how much trash is all around us without our noticing it. We picked up about a million cigarette butts and other gross items (although we put a moratorium on anything requiring a haz-mat suit. Barack would understand). The wind was bitingly cold, and we found ourselves swept up in a tornado of dust and plastic trash bags whenever a TriMet bus would zoom by.

But despite all of this, there was something immensely gratifying about the outing. At the time, I think I knew vaguely what it had to do with, but not until I heard Annie Leonard put it into words did I really understand: Consumer Me—finicky, insecure, indecisive, never satiated—was taking the day off. And Citizen Me was dusting off the cobwebs, rolling up her sleeves, and getting some work done. Sure, it was just one block in my neighborhood, and I’m sure it’s coated in trash again. But at least for that one day I brought my citizen self out into the light and let her work toward the greater good and perhaps, also, the greater happiness.

About Raina Hassan

Raina Hassan is the communications assistant at Oregon Humanities.

25 March 2010 | Posted by Raina Hassan in Inside O. Hm. New Ideas
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