A Bucket o’ Buttons
I’ve been on a rag rug hyperfocus this week! As I’ve been cutting shirts I’ve also been collecting buttons from the dressier ones just to see how many I can accumulate.
All this cutting and making and button collecting has gotten me on a particular line of thought – why are buttons even being manufactured anymore? Like… does the world still need buttons? Are there not enough buttons already in existence on planet earth that we could probably stop dedicating resources to this cause?
Let’s just go down a rabbit hole and explore a hypothetical world in which we could halt all button production in the name of resource conservation:
How are we to know who has a stash of buttons? A craft store full of new buttons can guarantee them as soon as I need one.
What if we knew our neighbors well enough to know who has a hoard of buttons? How could we connect with them? Could we use “I need a button” as a way to connect to a person on Nextdoor perhaps? Or Facebook? A hyperlocal buy nothing group? Could we use those online tools to boost offline connections?
Can the occasional need for very simple physical objects become a strategy to organize our communities? Could this be one of a million tiny ways we resist consumerist problem solving that requires endless purchasing of objects?
Could we normalize asking for help by saying “Hey, I need a button!” .
How are we to ensure we could get a specific style of button?
How important is it that all buttons on all garments match all the time? Is anyone going to notice? If so, is the world actually going to end if one button looks unlike the others? If it simply seems bothersome, why is that?
What emotional attachments do we hold to sameness? To style? To appropriate appearances?
What other areas of our lives do we hold those norms?
What about the skills gaps of even doing anything with the button?
You may be thinking by this point it’s all a moot point, no one can sew anymore and everyone’s burned out and just grabs a new shirt – there are endless shirts at thrift stores across the globe. Isn’t that still better than buying new fast fashion? Shouldn’t we also make space for folks that are simply too tired to think about this stuff or don’t have the resources to participate in overcomplicated button-acquiring processes?
For sure. But what do we as a society lose when we wield “some people can’t” as a reason for many people who can to not?
What community building opportunities are lost because we’ve lost the skill, the desire even, to seek out resources from within our community, as opposed to buying them from corporations run by billionaires? What trades are lost? What arts are lost? What learning and critical thinking opportunities pass us by because layers of privilege and burnout prevent us from engaging in such habits?
And what happens when we just do that stuff anyways?
Small is Big
Well here we are. The end. Back to a world in which experimental AI will tell you where all the buttons are made. And we have no buttons to turn the buttons off. But I hope the point is clear –
Our world is deeply deeply fuckered up right now. It doesn’t look to be getting un-fuckered up any time in the immediate future. But the power to start shifting the norms that have fucked it all up – that part is actually entirely within our collective control.
Unpacking the littlest things we do as “consumers” – as simple as running to the craft store for a button – can help us find ways to engage in our community instead.
I challenge you to reflect on this idea for a few days. Ask yourself how it might fit in your own life. And ask yourself – what if we all operated as if radical change is truly as small as a button?
Can buttons really take down billionaires?