The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption

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Question: Whatever happened to off-consumption? (Amit, in response to my purchase of a Nokia E71 smartphone.)

Answer: Like there’s no end to acquisition, there’s no end to relinquishment too, and the only absolute ideal in both cases is to give up your life for your pursuit.

When I watched ‘Into the Wild’, I felt fake. My own experiment seemed but a shadow in front of the extremes to which Chris went.

So, of course, my off consumption experiment is fake.

But it’s fake because I need a (any) mobile phone to begin with, not because I want a high-end smartphone like Nokia E71.

It’s a version of the breakfast cereal argument I once had with a reader: if I consider breakfast cereal to be a necessity, I might as well buy the high-end, branded version that I like, instead of the cheap store brand version that tastes terrible to me.

From the beginning, my experiment has been about wanting fewer things, not cheaper things. There’s a difference between the two, even though it’s a subtle one sometimes.

Background: I’m going on a sabbatical for a year, so I have to return my mobile phone and my laptop to my company.

Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild’ is a brilliant movie adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book about the real-life (mis)adventures of Christopher McCandless.

I had been dying to watch ‘Into the Wild’ ever since I read about it in the April 2008 issue of David Report. So, I was delighted when GK brought over the DVD for our Saturday Night Movie Marathon session. It is such sweet serendipity that reaffirms my faith that the universe reaches out to give you whatever you ask for.

The movie itself is mind-blowing, especially in the context of my own experiment, and I went through an entire spectrum of emotions over its two and a half hour run.

Emile Hirsch is superb as Christopher, the idealistic, but troubled, twenty-something protagonist who, inspired by Tolstoy and Thoreau, decides to abandon his career and his family, give away his $24000 savings to charity and hitchhike to Alaska to live in the wilderness.

Christopher deals in extremes and evokes extreme reactions. It’s easier, therefore, to idolize him as enlightened or reject him as naive than to identify with him.