May 11 2008
Sun-Times: The Age of YAWNS
The Chicago Sun-Times has a story about an interesting phenomena. In reaction against America’s buy-everyting, consume-everything culture, a cohort of affluent young people seems to fit this acronym: Young And Wealthy, but Normal (YAWN). Excerpt and link:
SAN FRANCISCO — They drive hybrid cars, if they drive at all, shop at local stores, if they shop at all, and pay off their credit cards every month, if they use them at all.
The acronym comes from the Sunday Telegraph of London, which noted that an increasing number of rich young Britons are socially aware, concerned about the environment and given less to consuming than to giving money to charity.
Yawns sound dull, but they are the new movers and shakers, their dreams big and bold. They are men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s who want nothing less than to change the world and save the planet.
The high-tech world has spawned some Yawns, but they can sprout anywhere. In fact, Yawns are a subset of a growing global movement of the eco-socially aware. The state of the economy and the state of the planet have inspired people to consider what they buy and how they spend in ways not seen since the ”Small is Beautiful” and ecology movements of the 1970s.
The movement makes perfect sense, said David Grusky, a sociologist at Stanford University, since society tends to follow cycles, with anti-materialist periods like the hippie movement generating a pro-materialist reaction — the yuppie period — and so on. Not to mention, he adds, that the evidence of major climate change and a concern with terrorism give rise to more interest in spiritual as opposed to material objectives.
That helps explain why Earth Day has become so big again, why products are all going ”green,” and why freecycle.org, an Internet community bulletin board where members offer items for free, has grown in five years from a dozen members in Tucson, Ariz., to a network of more than 3,000 cities in 80 countries.
”Americans have been on a buying binge for the last 10 years,” she said. ”Our closets are full. Our attics are full. Our garages are full. Enough already!”
Note: I assume that the picture above is under copyright. My apologies. I just had to do it.