Coming Fights
euthanasia
death penalty
sex and the politician
media violence
censorship
gun law

Chicago, February 2004, Consumerism: to buy or not to buy...
This Fight Club was televised and shown on ABC7 two weeks later.
In this relatively affluent society we are able to buy much more than we actually need, and there is an unending choice of products to fulfill all our consumer desires. Cool, fun products. Designers enjoy creating such coveted products, and manufacturers enjoy the sales. In fact, the US economy is wholly supported by high consumption. However, shorter product lives and the increase in landfill-destined products have created an environmental and social problem. To buy or not to buy, that is truly the question.

Pro-consumers battled it out against anti-consumers. There was a lot of energy and passion in the debate, in particular from the crowd. After one hour, JohnPaul Kusz was voted the champion by the crowd after fighting a constant onslaught of opinions and questions from all around. It was possibly the best Fight Club to date, and with double the crowd of previous fights.

Boston, April 2004: Consumerism, Fight Club at the IDSA Northeast Conference
This was the first ever Fight Club in Boston. This topic went so well in Chicago we had to give the Northeast a taste of this uncompromising subject matter. On one side we had the enigmatic New York Brand Strategist David Gensler who was in full support of increasing the volume of product sales which he argued supported the fundamental principles of the capitalist society and the success of the US financial system.

His opposition was Aaron Openheimer of Design Continuum in Boston, who fought in defense of the environmental implications of the mass waste of short-lived products. He also argued that the endless string of marketing strategies that make us want the next cool product as soon as we've purchased the last one leave us in an eternal unsatisfied state.

Here are some interesting links on both sides of the subject matter:

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_topic_environmentalism_and_animal_rights
http://www.westland.net/venice/art/cronk/consumer.htm

http://www.ecofuture.org/pk/pkar9506.html

http://www.moraldefense.com/ProTech/

http://earth4man.com/

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/parents/marketing/index.cfm

http://www.verdant.net/

http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/articles/griffiths.htm

http://revbilly.com/

http://www.celebratecapitalism.org/bernsteindeclaration/english/index.html

http://www.efn.org/~hkrieger/mallaise.htm (some interesting observational photos)