Conforming to Sustainability

After speaking about sustainability for the past couple of weeks in my classes, I have come to realize this subject is not as simple as it may first appear.  Driving home on the weekend to see vacant lands where forests once used to be really hits differently.  These areas can't even be used for farmland as they are too swampy in this area.  So how then, is this considered sustainability?

How a message is portrayed to an audience can be a make it or break it in the marketing world.  The media in itself influences what we like, how we think, how we act, and who we are because more times than not, we make ourselves to believe that we must be like everyone else.  We must conform to how others see the world.  This can be a good thing, but it can also cause problems in the real world. 

In an advertisement, we are often persuaded to buy something or think that we need a particular product in our lives.  With sustainability being such a hot topic in today's economy, it's not surprising that we use sustainability as yet another way to conform to how the rest of the world thinks.  It's not necessarily a bad thing but we need to learn to not lose our sense of uniqueness in the process.

Americans are being convinced that sustainability is necessary. It is the only way- but to what terms? When does the psychological push end and we, as Americans can live without being influenced by others?  The problem is we are always influenced by what is going on around us.  We are programmed to accept the general opinion; to conform to society's views but when will that stop and we can not be influenced by the choices of others?  When will we start thinking for ourselves?

Sustainability is becoming a hot topic in the media because so many people believe it is the only way to "save our planet."  The crazy thing is the general public just doesn't understand.  We, as a country, as a society, as an industry and economy, have become too developed, too industrialized to go back to the way things used to be even 30 years ago.  And yet, the public still listens to the celebrity endorsers who are encouraging people to "save the trees" and "buy less stuff" as a way to help with this problem.

In marketing, a person can easily persuade an audience one way or another using something called the persuasion matrix.  With this process, a marketer is using a number of techniques to convey a message to their target audience which will hopefully influence them enough to sway their opinion on the matter at hand. 

This is exactly what people do when speaking about sustainability.  Often, you will hear people talking of "the good old days" and when "life was simpler" because they believe we could go back to that again and be just as well off.  The problem with this is, it is physically impossible to do this in today's society.  We have become too industrialized, too acceptance of the new ways of society that without them, we would be helpless.  I guarantee one could not go without using the Internet for even a day.  We have just become accustomed to a certain standard of living that even attempting to go back would never work.

Yes, sustainability is important but to what extent?  There's only so much we can do before one will realize we cannot go back in time nor will we want to.  We've made progress in America.  We've built a higher standard of living because we can.  We have the technologies to do it.  For someone to say, sustainability is our only hope does not understand the amount of changes we've made in society.  We've become better in so many areas.  Why would we want to take that away?

I may not see as many trees as I'm driving to my hometown.  I may see more open land than forests.  But I don't see skyscrapers in my small hometown so that's what counts.  Sustainability is about using what we have with caution and making sure we will still have enough for generations to come.  We are working toward a better tomorrow.  So instead of worrying about what we are doing wrong, let's focus on what we are doing right in this country.

We have the technologies to become greater than we already are.  Let's use that to our advantage and continue to progress.  Let's show the world we are more than the waste products we make.