DIY Crafting Challenges the Big-Box Stores

I dream nightmares of gray. Of people marching from one given task to the next, of their hair washing out and their face fading into lines of age that know bitterness. Robots in human masks. I mourn for individuality, a concept that is chipped away day by day in the form of teen magazines and big-box department stores. And the landfills overflow with packaging, our children die - poisoned by their own commercially created toys - under our noses, and we turn not to ourselves but to our government looking for answers.

Chain stores have affected our very culture, nightmare or not. Global manufacturing has urged us to dress, furnish our homes, and decorate our walls the same way - and pressures us to spend more money when trends change and those commercial demands we've followed are no longer fashionable.

In short, we're encouraged to be consumers of our own culture.

Mass production of the products we use every day, discard and purchase again, are a major cause of global warming and the poisoning of our air, water and soil. We're placing in our childrens' hands toys that were produced on a massive scale in another country where our government can't control the contents (just take a look at the latest children's toy recalls for a great example of that), and we're throwing away tons of packaging that serves no purpose other than to pressure us into buying the same things Dick and Jane next door have.

Every item you make or purchase from an independent artist or crafter strikes a blow to the forces of mass production and generally help us reconnect on a real human scale. Whether you're creating or purchasing, DIY is more than a movement or a political statement. It has benefits that go unnoticed, ignored, or swept aside; it's time that we take a look at what our hands can really do for us.

Handmade Culture