What Stuff Is This?

So, the other day I saw a YouTube video, “The Story of Stuff.” The presenter, Annie Leonard, is obviously very committed to her cause, which is essentially to get people to stop the unchecked flow of consumerism, and to take responsibility by wise management of our finite resources. It was pretty good. There were a couple of things, though, that raised a red flag for me. One was her adamant demeanor, the way she seemed to demand that we draw the same conclusions she was drawing. The other was what she said about government’s role: that “they’re supposed to watch over us and take care of us. That’s their job.” This statement seemed to me to negate the sentence she used to preface it, that government is of the people and for the people. I wonder what happened to “by the people.”
Be that as it may, I felt alarmed at her implication that government is responsible for our welfare. That is only true in a protective sense; it is not true in a providing sense. What Annie finds objectionable, that our government has become too cozy with big corporations and has indirectly, therefore, assented to the plundering of the poor and of third world countries, is indeed heinous and tragic; however, I believe that what she is advocating, at least by implication, that government step in to legislate economic endeavors in favor of the “green” way, is fraught with the same caveats.
As I wrote in a response on Facebook: “I think expecting more government to take care of us is what got us into the mess she describes in the first place. We let go of individual responsibility, of government by the people, by allowing government to ‘take care of us.’ If we continue in that mindset, but in the opposite direction, you can bet we'll just end up with another corrupt system.”
With so much wrong with our government, and with so much clamoring in so many different directions as to ways of correcting it, it is easy to become confused and befuddled, as I think many people have. The tendency at that point is to do nothing, which allows the enthusiasm of the Annie Leonards in all walks of life to run rampant.
What’s wrong with that? Only this: while we are indeed living upon a finite planet, we are infinite beings, with an eternal purpose. Government is “instituted of God for the benefit of man; and …he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society….no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life (Doctrine and Covenants 134:1-2).”
In other words, only as we conform to eternal principles of truth, and govern ourselves accordingly, can we act within and support effective governments. Otherwise, causes become religions in and of themselves, inevitably encroaching upon “the free exercise of conscience.”
The problem today is not the Constitutional government, but the way in which “we, the people,” through our abandonment of those eternal, true principles in our headlong pursuit of our own individual wants and desires, have allowed our rulers to violate their trust, under the guise of catering to our demands. In the 50s, consumerism made sense, and the politicians, for their own purposes, catered to it. Today, we see its horrific downside and in a panic, run off in the opposite direction, to which today’s politicians will pander, again for their own purposes, and with the same disastrous results.
The only safe way is to hold to eternal principles of truth that never vary, because they are not finite. The Constitution was written in adherence to those principles; it behooves us to return to it, in strict adherence ourselves.
President Ezra Taft Benson, who served under President Eisenhower as Secretary of Agriculture and who was a patriot in the best possible sense of the word, wrote and gave many outstanding addresses on topics like government and individual freedom. From his speech, “The Proper Role of Government,” which can be accessed on YouTube, comes this statement, which is actually a quotation:
“No historian of the future will ever be able to prove that the ideas of individual liberty practiced in the United States of America were a failure. He may be able to prove that we were not yet worthy of them. The choice is ours.” (Charles Hallberg and Co., 116 West Grand Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 60610)
In point of fact, President Benson said what I have been trying to say far more convincingly and eloquently, so I urge and exhort all who read this to go to that speech, which can also be googled for the text.
To conclude: I applaud Annie Leonard for her very real concerns, but I wish to sound a voice of warning to her and to everyone, that we must subject all our concerns to the standard of the one overarching and eternal Governor. Only then will our purposes and our efforts find fruition.