Philosophy: Conspicuous Consumption

The road trip is over, I’m back in Missoula, back at work, back at school. I hope to post several of my thoughts from the trip over the next couple weeks, but I’m realizing that I’m going to be extremely busy – so we’ll see. I have 2 25pg and one 12pg paper to write by May 12, one test, and a conference May 5th & 6th to prepare for.

One of the things that came to mind often during our trip was our conspicuous consumption – not so much Ana’s and mine, but America’s in general. I rarely ever eat out, and if I do it’s usually a treat from someone, so I don’t pay much attention to the costs or left-overs. But I did notice on the trip the fact that nearly every time we ate out we’d have an extra portion left over. Once we took the extras to-go (adding lovely styrofoam containers to our list of consumed items); but the food was only mediocre to begin with and after half a day in a car in the Mojave Desert, it was practically inedible.

Learning a bit about global poverty and hunger, I’ve come to mourn the throwing away of perfectly good food (practically second-natured for Americans), so throwing away the half-eaten meal and the containers was not a pleasant experience.

After that I came up with the idea of just ordering a soup or side dish and then helping Ana finish off her meal (provided it wasn’t too covered with meat), which very nicely cut our bills by 30-40% and left us with empty plates.

It’s a small gesture, for sure, but its something.