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Heathen Shopper
A Heathen Shopper is someone who shops in a way to support the growth of
Heathendom.
For Heathen Transition purposes Heathendom is a social order where power is distributed - both economic power and cultural power - so that people tend to belong to small natural communities which have some real ability to look after their own economics affairs and develop their own culture.
Heathendom is made up of small communities and small businesses. So some basic rules for Heathen Shopping might be:
1. Support a small business rather than a large one.
2. If possible support a small business that supports other small businesses.
(e.g. an independent shop that buys product from small producers)
3. Support local producers in preference to distant ones.
-Firstly it is easier to get to know local producers personally so that you develop a relationship with them that is not purely commercial.
-Secondly if everybody supports their local producers then lots of different small businesses would be supported rather than one big national or multinational one.
What is a Supermarket?
A supermarket is a retail operation of a corporate giant. Corporate giants are 'man-giants' - i.e. giants made up of people as opposed to 'earth-giants' or other kinds of giants.
Corporate giants can also be called 'Pyramid Giants' because their command structure is in the shape of a pyramid with a few people at the top who give instructions to a larger number of subordinates and so on down the chain of command. Because corporate giants are run by a few people at the top they can also be called Oligarchic Giants - (maybe oligiants or Olly Giants for short?)
A feature of a giant is that it is massively larger than an individual human being. Since a giant is massively larger than you it tends not to care about you all that much - from a giant's perspective you look tiny and insignificant.
When you shop at a supermarket you give the Business Giant a gift of money in exchange for a product that you want. The money you give the Business Giant feeds it and helps it to grow bigger.
As a Business Giant gets bigger and more powerful it is able to use its strength to clobber other smaller businesses that are competing with it. For instance having greater financial reserves than smaller businesses it can lower its prices temporarily to outcompete its smaller rivals until they go bust and then raise its prices back up again. A Business Giant will also have greater lobbying power with government than smaller businesses and can try and get a government to take actions that skew the field of competition in favour of itself.
When allowed free rein Business Giants have a tendency to expand and gobble up their smaller rivals so that progressively fewer and fewer businesses control more and more of the economic activity. With fewer businesses to choose from then individuals have less and less choice in who they go to to gain what they need. This means they have less influence with the business concerned and have to take what it offers at the price it offers or go without.
In a Heathen society people would have influence because they would be running businesses themselves or at least would often know those running the business in a social context. While normally supporting their local businesses - if things go badly wrong they still have the option of finding another slightly more distant one.
A Heathen Society will only come about where people develop a Heathen Attitude.
The Heathen Attitude says that you should try and support the processes that lead to a more Heathen society of distributed economic and cultural power even when you could lose out in some other way in the short-term. A Heathen Shopper is someone with a Heathen Attitude when they go out shopping.
April 2011 CE