The term 'Retail Therapy' was used in 1986 to describe what was wrong with us – using shopping bags to fix our 'psychic ills' – but we've turned it into a badge of honour! And in 2001 a European survey showed that a third of shoppers have a "high level of addiction to rash or unnecessary consumption". The 'cure' is worse than the illness. Our world is in conflict, it probably always has been – an endless war between those who demand a fairer, better society and those who like it the way it is (with them on top!). We are fortunate, in the 'civilized' countries, to have had campaigners free us from open sewers, contaminated water, sweat shops, and from sending our children to coal seams instead of schools. Most of us feel comfortable because we have made clean, safe, luxurious lives where we see ourselves as our own masters. But the problems haven't been fixed; they've just been exported to countries where labour (and lives) are cheap because they don't protect their people with the basic rights we take for granted. And the truth is we ourselves haven't risen up the social ladder nearly as far as we like to think, because we now have a new role – to shop! We've been conditioned, in just a few decades, to blindly accept that we need to continually 'consume' vast amounts of 'stuff' to be happy; but the real purpose is to 'grow' the economy, to keep transferring wealth up the social ladder to those with power. Like most people I have spent much of my life engrossed in my immediate situation and in pursuit of things, like a bigger house, faster car, swankier clothes, and the latest technology. I never questioned whether my life was really enriched by this materialism, and thoughts of who was really paying the true price for this extravagant lifestyle were occasional and too readily dismissed with lines like 'I work hard so I deserve this'. So do shopping and all this 'stuff' really make us happy? Recent studies show just how far this is from the reality – for people under 65, nearly half of all illness in the UK is mental illness – stress, depression, anxiety etc. That is nearly as much as all other physical illnesses put together! Work harder to buy more things to reward yourself for working harder! So why do we do it? The evidence shows that what really makes us happy are friends, family, and nature – companionship and love, experiences and connection, being outside. We fail to see the irony in that, if we didn't work so long, we wouldn't be manipulated into 'luxury' shopping to briefly cheer us up, and if we didn't have to pay for these luxuries we wouldn't have to work so hard in the first place! This wasn't an accident. In 1955 the economist Victor Lebow stated:

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.

We know things need to change but tinkering with isolated problems isn't helping and we can't shop our way out of this mess. We need solutions that take an integrated approach – remaking the connection between our actions and the consequences on our environments, planet, and its life. Spaice (as you've probably already seen if you're reading this on our website) is an online retailer of computer and stationery products. At first glance this may not seem obviously related to the problems we touched on, however we are a retailer like nothing you have seen before. Spaice is a social enterprise – this means that our focus is on benefitting society, rather than on making the biggest profits we can. Our main goal is to inform you of what's really happening, good and bad, in the world and then make it easy to do something about it. We start by helping you avoid the manipulative marketing and by revealing the true cost of your shopping, with every product showing a rating on the manufacturers' record on corruption, and human, environmental, and animal rights. There will also be plenty of information for you to learn more, if you want to, on these four key areas, as well as on specific issues and the projects that are addressing them. We help you to spend both your time and money in far more beneficial ways than just buying more 'things' by providing ideas and access to lots of easy alternatives – such as spending time with friends and family, exploring and making the most of your local area, and enjoying experiences rather than things. But if you do need to buy something, Spaice will make it easy for you to choose less harmful brands and at least 60% of the profits from your purchase go straight back to our charity partners, such as Amnesty International, who can then use the money to address some of the problems caused by our consumption. Our aim at Spaice is to help us all:

Stop unnecessary buying – resist the siren songs of marketers peddling things we don't really need and finding things, instead, that really do improve our lives;

Consider the hidden costs – see the suffering and damage that our uninformed choices can cause so that we can choose more wisely;

Learn about and support the good causes – make sure our money goes to the people who do the really useful things to improve our world.

Spaice is about making all our individual acts of personal responsibility part of a collective voice that cannot be ignored. Starting a quiet revolution that turns our age of information into an age of wisdom where doing 'the right thing' becomes the norm and being selfish and greedy become things to be ashamed of. We're really excited to be starting this journey and hope you'll follow our blog by subscribing to our RSS Feed and join in by letting us have your thoughts below. And don't forget to share this post and follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@SocialSpaice)! Speak to you soon, Vipul