I first heard about Patricia Martin and her book RenGen (Renaissance Generation) while I was listening to Susan Bratton’s Dishy Mix, one of my favorite podcasts.
The basic premise of RenGen is that we are about to see a cultural movement that is similar in scope and scale to the Renaissance. This movement will be spearheaded by a sophisticated and demanding group of ‘cultural consumers’ who are expressing themselves creatively and organizing themselves into communities using the powerful tools provided by social media. To succeed in this context, brands will need to transform big ideas into reality (idea brands), build compassionate relationships (compassion brands), provide the tools to remove anxiety (anxiety brands), fuse opposites into a holistic collage and provide authentic experiences.
Also filed in Owning vs. Experiencing, Research
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Tagged Authenticity, Creative Class, Cultural Consumer, Dishy Mix, LitLamp Communications Group, New Rich, Patricia Martin, Personalization, Renaissance Generation, RenGen, Richard Florida, Simplicity, Social Media, Susan Bratton, Timothy ferris
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Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
I spent last Sunday at Crossword book store in Kemps Corner, reading Timothy Ferris’s ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’.
Given Tim’s ‘live it up’ image, I expected it to be a book about having more; instead, it turned out to be a book about finding happiness in having less.
The basic premise of the book is that we have a choice between work and leisure. An income of $100000 a year means very different things when it requires a 60 hour work week and a 40 hour work week. At more than 60 hours a week, typical of Asia and America, it inevitably results in stress-related health disorders. At less than 40 hours a week, typical of Europe, it results in a happy work-life balance. At 4 hours a week, typical of Tim, it means nirvana.
When you can’t buy things, you learn to ask for things, and when you ask for things, you learn something about yourself and others.
Throughout last week, I have been asking my friends to make me aloo parathas.
It started last Sunday, when Kanishka and Avantika came over for lunch. My cooking range is limited to pasta and pulao so, if you eat at my place regularly, you might find the menu a little repetitive. Knowing that, I had made two different types of pasta — farfalle, bell peppers and spring onions in Mexican salsa sauce and casarecce and baby corn in cheese and wine sauce — and added mushrooms on toast as a side dish. However, I wasn’t really surprised when, five minutes into lunch, Avantika took a break from picking at her food and asked me —
Also filed in Conversations, Food Cravings, Learning to Ask, Zero Dollar Dating
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Tagged Aloo Paratha, Avantika, Colaba, Friends, Gift, Gifting, Kala Ghoda, Kanishka, Merlot, Pasta
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I haven’t watched TV or read newspapers or magazines for more than a year now, with one exception — twice a month, I stop by at the roadside magazine stall opposite my house and hand over thirty rupees for a copy of Time Out Mumbai.
However, even though I have been buying the magazine for almost two years now, I only started to think of it as a necessity when I started my experiment.
Also filed in Free Culture, Popular Culture
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Tagged A Good Marriage, Alliance Francaise, American Center, Crossword, Documentary, Eric Rohmer, Film, Helke Sander, Liberators and Liberties, Malin Suri, Master Class on Film, Max Mueller Bhavan, Michael Moore, Mumbai, My Night at Maud's, National Center for Performing Arts, NCPA, Patrick French, Pauline at the Beach, Preuves a l'appui, Screening, Shekhar Kapur, Sicko, Sudhir Mishra, The All Round Reduced Personality - Redupers, The Subjective Factor, The Trouble With Love, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V, Time Out, Time Out Mumbai
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The Saturday Night Movie Marathon turned out to be exactly what I needed after working all day on another big presentation.
To begin with, fewer people turned up — and, while twenty is perhaps the right number for a party — five works better for a movie marathon.
Then, GK turned up with a few DVDs of his own and we decided to leave aside my lineup of classic World War 2 movies and watch ‘Into the Wild’ instead.
Also filed in Free Culture, Other Experiments, Popular Culture, Weekend Report
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Tagged Ang Lee, Bangalore Royal Challengers, Chenin Blanc, Film, Gavin Hood, Indian Premier League, Into the Wild, Johny Walker Black Label, Judith Levine, Lust Passion, Movie, Mumbai Indians, Not Buying It, Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, Rendition, Saturday Night Movie Marathon, Sean Penn, Sula, Twenty20, Wankhede Stadium, Wine
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Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
The problem with being off consumption is that you can no longer buy a ‘treat’ for yourself in order to snap out of a bad mood. Being off consumption means no comfort food, no self-gifting, no temporary postponement of pain by the rush of adrenalin triggered off by that perfect purchase.
But I knew that when I went off consumption. I knew that, to resist the temptation to buy, I’ll basically need to be happy all the time. I also knew that I’ll face my first big test as soon as I hit a bad day.
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
The April 2008 Issue of David Report: I Shop Therefore I Am (via TreeHugger and Santosh Maharshi) identifies some of the trends that led me towards my off consumption experiment:-
- From conspicuous consumption to conscious consumption.
- From brand-consciousness to background-consciousness.
- From synthetic to organic.
- From mass-produced to hand-crafted.
- From global to local.
- From short-term to sustainable.
- From fashionable to durable.
- From valuing things to valuing insights.
- From fitting in/ standing out to being.
- From buying more to buying less.
- From doing more to doing less.
- From multi-tasking to down-shifting.
- From buying to sharing/ exchanging.
- From owning to experiencing.
- From having to giving.
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Undeterred by my earlier escapade with ‘The French Touch’ festival, I returned to the Alliance Francaise auditorium on Thursday evening to watch Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film ‘Le Petit Soldat’ (’The Little Soldier’).
Set against the backdrop of the Algerian War, the film narrates the tragic love story of Michel Subord and Anna Karina who fall in love in spite of belonging to warring terrorist groups. The film pulsates with the same restless energy as ‘Breathless’, my favorite Godard movie, which was screened at the festival earlier on Tuesday. So, in spite of the little anti-climax at the end, when the DVD stuck and wouldn’t play, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, or at least the part of the movie I did watch.
Also filed in Conversations, Free Culture, Popular Culture, Why Go Off Consumption?
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Tagged Alliance Francaise, Anna Karina, Bollywood, Breathless, Chinatown, Film Festival, Films, G K desai, jean Luc Godard, John Mayer, Le Petit Soldat, Madhur Bhandarkar, Michel Subord, Mumbai, Something's Missing, The French Touch Festival, The Little Soldier, Tri Continental Film Festival
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Saturday, April 12th, 2008
During my year of being off-consumption, I’m not allowed to watch movies, plays, or concerts, unless they are free.
However, I’m discovering that Mumbai has a wide variety of free entertainment to offer; all you need is the inclination, and a copy of Time Out Mumbai.
But it was not Time Out, but a flier someone thrust into my hand as I walked out of the Alliance Francaise auditorium after watching Godard’s ‘Little Soldier’ that led me to the Little Theater at NCPA on Friday evening to watch Surabhi Sharma’s documentary film ‘Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean’.
Also filed in Backstory, Free Culture, Popular Culture
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Tagged Bhojpuri, Bihari, Caplypso, Caribbean, Chutney Soca, Dancehall, Denise Belfon, Documentary, Film, Free Culture, I am Lookin’ for an Indian Man, Jahaji Music: India in the Caribbean, Jamaica, Remo Fernandes, Rikki Jai, Soca, Surabhi Shulkla, Tejaswini Niranjana, Time Out, Trinidad, Trishanku
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The intent of my off consumption experiment is to spend an year without buying anything that is not a necessity.
Even though I have written down rather elaborate rules for what is allowed and what isn’t during my year of being off consumption, I have deliberately avoided defining what is a necessity. This is because one of the most interesting aspects of the experiment for me is to discover what I think of as a necessity and how it changes with context.
Perhaps the only fool-proof approach to discover what I think of as a necessity is to record and study what I actually buy, and how it changes over time.
Also filed in Food Cravings, Label Blindness, Shopping List, Shopping Style, What Is Necessity?
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Tagged Britannia Cheese Slices, Colgate Advanced Whitening Toothpaste, Good Earth Muesli, Good Earth Toasted Oats, Label Blindness, Man's World magazine, Necessity, Shopping, Time Out magazine
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