Well ratcni01, it all comes down to how bad you perceive the problem to be, i guess. I wasn't proposing "moving to the country" as a solution to blanket advertising, or even as a tactic to combat it. That was the root of my disagreement with Citizensmurf. I was thinking more of the wider-scale problem presented by western culture... i.e our unsustainable resource consumption. And living a sustainable life is, in fact, the only rational response to *that* problem.
Let me put my cards on the table, and state this in perhaps the starkest form i have yet. Barring as yet unforeseen technologies (the development of energy-positive fusion power*, as a for-instance), my view is that western culture - as we know it - has 15-20 years left. Maximum.
There is a rising global demand for oil. This is generated by a rising global population and the rapid industrialisation of Asia, coupled with ubiquitous western capitalism which is predicated upon continual growth. At some point, evidence will emerge that world oil production has begun to go into permanent decline.
Current thinking sets the decline at between 2.5% and 3% per year. There is no current consensus as to when this will occur, but the people who appear most convincing to me personally, place it in the last half of this decade (possibly as early as 2005, possibly as late as 2012).
Given how _essential_ cheap oil is to the systems which currently feed and support most of the world, the consequences of an oil shock will be calamitous and set off uncontrollable chains of events. Those dependent upon the crude oil infrastructure will not fare well.
So when you ask:
>
> Going out to the country, who does it help?
> how does it contribute?
>
It helps you. It helps your family. It helps society at large by lessening our overall reliance upon cheap oil. It helps those around you by demonstrating the possibilities of a genuine alternative. It helps the planet you live on, and it helps your own relationship with that planet. I honestly believe, that there is simply no more "helpful" thing that an individual 'westerner' can possibly do at this moment in history.
If there is a chink of light to be found anywhere here, it is in those people who reject western consumerism, reject our dependence upon unrenewable resources, and embrace a sustainable lifestyle.
But so long as you live in the city, then i believe direct opposition to mediated culture via ad-busting (amongst other things) is a worthy activity.
Or something.
* Fusion would not avert an oil crisis. It would delay it significantly however; and might provide us with the tools to avert it. Maybe. However those i've corresponded with who are researching fusion are not optimistic about it arriving any time soon.
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