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It is becoming increasingly clear that everyone's well-being depends on the quality of our common life, lived together on this planet (Parks-Daloz, Keen, Keen, & Daloz-Parks, 1996). The theme, Rising Costs and Quality of Life, challenges us to reflect on how responsibility for ensuring basic rights for all is shared equally. To guide this process, it is helpful to reflect on what the common good entails and how it relates to rising costs of living and quality of life-ideas that imply a connection between the common good and consumerism. People in a consumer society consume to improve their quality of life; there are costs associated with this practice (financial, time, ecological, societal, and human) for the individual and the collective.
Results are often negative and consumers are often blamed for the decline in the integrity of the earth, family life, communities, and society. But, they are not the only players in the market game. Consumers cannot make the needed changes alone, nor should they bear all the blame for the fallout of living in a consumer society. This blame is unfair and often misplaced because consumers are not given information about the work, social, political, economic, or justice conditions of the workers who make, transport, or sell the products they purchase. It is just as difficult to obtain information about the environmental impact (New Community Project, 2005). What can family and consumer sciences (FCS) do differently to help people become more reflective and better at questioning their role in the world or to help people face the powerful societal messages that hold them accountable for progressive growth, instead of peace and stability, leading to an unhealthy commons?
Professional reflection about the role of individual consumer behavior on the conditions of the shared commons and humanity should encourage altered approaches to consumption and educating others about consumption. Complexity, emergence, and patterns of relationship concepts are ways to reframe the FCS understanding of consumerism so that it is seen as interconnected with the common good and the human condition. As a caveat, learning about one's role in perpetuating less-than-responsible consumption can be discouraging, overwhelming, or disheartening. But, professionals are encouraged to step beyond natural guilt and anger experienced when one's way of being in the world is...