Ralph Nader Among the Lawyers Attracted to 'Too Much Stuff' Message
Ralph Nader was among the lawyers who showed up for a party celebrating the release of a book about Americans’ preoccupation with stuff and its impact on the planet.
Nader says the book The Story of Stuff is a new way of communicating that helps people understand the problem, the Washington Post reports. “We buy stuff,” Nader told the Post. “And pretty soon the stuff owns us.” People accumulating stuff “don’t take into account the environmental and geopolitical wars for oil” stemming from all that acquisition, he said.
The book’s author, Annie Leonard, spent 10 years tracking where our stuff is made and where it is dumped, investigating how “perceived obsolescence” encourages us to toss out items that are still perfectly good, the Post says.
Another lawyer who is swayed by the message is Danny Oshtry, who confessed to needing fewer things. “I feel our culture is overly concerned about material things,” Oshtry told the Post at the book party. “People’s sense of meaning and life and fulfillment and happiness comes from things other than material things. I want to simplify my life. I don’t want all this junk.”
