Yes I know we’ve reached the point of peak oil. Yes I know living the way we live isn’t sustainable. Yes I know we have to get a grip on climate change. I know all these things. I understand all these things. But the truth is, part of me wants to consume as much as I possibly can before I die, or before the planet dies.

consumer culture and it’s machinations is seductive and addictive and I’m dependent on it. It’s the only model of living I’ve ever known. And there are millions of other people like this, which is good news for consumerism, bad news for mother earth. In trying to change that, righteous indignation can only go so far. What’s also needed is a bit of . . . well sympathy.

I’m not a shopaholic, I’m not a kleptomaniac, I’ve just been plugged into the whole sell my time and labour to the money machine^tm , then pump money back into it by buying goods I don’t really need model of living.

It makes for a hollow existence, a disconnection from my essential humanity but I’m hooked on that model. Like a smoker, I see the warnings on the packet, the pictures of the cancerous lungs and the stained teeth. I know what it causes, what it does, but light up anyway with the nonchalance of addiction.

I’m not completely to blame. From the time I was old enough to understand the message of consumer culture, the message was that being something means having lots of things you don’t need. The education system didn’t help. Its aim was to fill me with enough bits of information to enable me to sell myself to the highest bidder. It taught me to compete as much as I can for everything I can. It taught me life is a marketplace, knowledge a commodity, work a (usually unfavourable) contract between me and the money machine.

As an adult I see and hear the same message of consumer culture. Having, regardless of need, is good. Being full of everything is fulfilment, being rich is enrichment. Consumer culture sooths me, assuages my fears about climate change, doom and gloom, blah de blah. Tells me I deserve these things because “I’m worth it”.

And I’m not alone. You may have been through the same. The people in charge of your country and mine may have too, which is a worry. If you apply the affects of consumer culture on the scale of countries, you end up with . . . well exactly what we have now. Competition not cooperation, secrecy not transparency, maintaining a position not flexibility, self interest not compassion. This is where we are as individuals, as countries, as a planet. But it begins with the individual.

You can try to educate me if you want, but telling me to change won’t help me to change. I already understand the issues. I need healing, not educating. I’m afflicted, I’ve been abused, I’m a vulnerable person. If the definition of a disability is impairment affecting someone’s life on a permanent basis, then I’m disabled and you probably are too.

I have to go cold Turkey there’s no doubt, but it’s hard. The money machine won’t let me go without a fight and it’s not easy being pelted by the message all the time. Like an alcoholic living in a town of breweries, I fall off the wagon a lot. My attempts at a sustainable lifestyle are difficult to sustain in the midst of consumer culture. It takes some focus. I try to ignore feeling like I’ve failed because I’m not rich or because I don’t have X, Y and Z, but the message of consumer culrure is constant and insistent. Modern life is permeated with it. Success and happiness are equal to having. Failure and unhappiness are equal to not having. Who wants to be a miserable failure?

But even if a strong willed individual can go cold turkey, what about the masses? Can everyone on the planet go cold turkey from consumer culture? What about the people who like what they see, but don’t have what they see (yet). These are the have nots. Try telling them they need to stop trying because the planet can’t take it.

Some people live in countries where a consumer culture is only just emerging and can still only dream of a consumer lifestyle. These are the wannabees. Try telling them consumer culture is bankrupt as a mode of living. Would be like allowing them to look through the windows of a shopping mall, then not allowing them in.

Addiction weakens the will, and there are lots and lots of people, whole nations that are very very weak. Our entire existence is based on a model of living that is fundamentally unsound. It’s not about what politics you have, or what God you pray to if any. It’s about changing our mode of life to something that works for the planet and for us, and it all starts with individuals like me.

So don’t demonise, sympathise. Refusing to change is one thing, wanting to change but not knowing how to is another. That’s where I and a lot of other people are. Replacing anger with compassion, politics with pragmatism, sadness with hope would be a start. Helping people be something different instead of just telling people to be something different would also help.

Most of all though I don’t want to be scared, or shocked or “re-educated”. I want practical advice on how to do things differently while at the same time living with consumer culture. Someone to take me by the hand, someone who knows the difficulties. A lifetime of conditioning is hard to break and the message of consumer culture can be subtler and more slippery than the famous and elusive keyser soze. Most of all I just need a bit of sympathy.