Nicholas Higgins 30/05/20

Banish the Manacles of Consumerism

‘Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing’, Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

Consumerism is the unmistakable feature of post modernity. The buying and owning of goods drives the economic growth of most, if not all, western economies. For today’s 1.7 billion strong ‘consumer class’ it’s lead to untold prosperity and ever rising of standards of living. As producers are under the constant pressure to create better products and services, it’s also one of the biggest engines for innovation.

Yet consumerism has by no means been immune of criticism. The throw away culture it induces is universally acknowledged to be a catastrophe for the environment. Metaphysically, it's no less than poison for the soul. Nostalgic conservatives, egalitarian progressives and environmentalists loudly agree that we are just buying too much stuff. No longer do we buy out of need, we let our desires run rampant in the relentless and unquenchable pursuit of ‘wants’.

Yet whilst consumerism is unquestionably an ecological disaster, who am I to say what someone does or does not need? Do we define ‘need’ as that which we require to stay alive? Or in order to lead a comfortable existence? Or perhaps to lead a ‘good life’? The fact is that in the absence of an individual’s values, goals, or circumstances, I can’t say. Besides, is it all that bad to indulge in your wants? For we would not be human if we did not experience desire; and it would be a miserable life indeed if these desires were never satisfied. 

What can be said with certainty is the unassailable dominance with which it holds in culture at large. So much so that consumerism is invested with a sort of quasi-religious power to dispense the elusive, ultimate things in life: happiness, fulfilment, purpose and identity. Little part of modern life is free from the tentacles of this new secular God. Bombarded with 1600 commercial messages a day, we’re manipulated into making particular decisions, subconsciously influenced in what to think, believe and feel. 

The problem, then, lay not with the greedy individual, but with the all pervading system that hook, line and sinkers that individual. We find ourselves in a culture that defines relationships and actions primarily through a matrix of consumption. As the philosopher Baudrillard explains, ‘consumption is a system of meaning’. We assign value to ourselves and others based on the goods we purchase. One’s identity is now contracted by the clothes you wear, the vehicle you drive, the house you live in, or the music on your phone. Note for example, what a Rolex or Ferrari says about where you fit in society’s social structure? Truly, you are what you buy.

This is sad since it limits wonderfully complex identity to the superficial froth of the material world. People become no more than consumers squeezed into the mould of standardised, dehumanised pseudo-man by the pressures of the advertising industry. We become standardised ‘plastic people’, rolling off the conveyor belt of modern technocracy. It’s even more depressing since consumer products don’t achieve fulfilment or contentment or happiness, particularly well. 

Research has shown that after a certain level, consumer products lead to a modest increment in self-reported happiness. If the idea of consumerism is to continually create new needs in people and make them consume more, it results in us constantly chasing after the carrot on the stick. Although we might reach it sometimes (buying a new car), usually it’s disappointing, and soon enough a new carrot (model) appears. A lack of fulfilment is built into the fabric of consumerism, and this is what keeps the wheels of the system turning. This leads us not to abandon things, as it should, but to buy more things in the hope that that the ‘new and improved’ thing will not disappoint like the last.  

Personal growth, character, community connection, intellect, relationships, love, spirituality - these are things are beyond consumerisms reach. They are satisfying in and of themselves; they rely on no insecure need to sign to the rest of the world your ‘success’ in life. They cultivate an identity and contentment that lasts longer than a fleeting purchase. One that’s independent of the capitalist machine, and completely and utterly your own. Still, we remain addicted to the false promises of consumerism, incuring punitive debt and working slavishly long hours along the way.

It’s the paradox of consumerism is that it promises just these things it can’t touch. Flick through a newspaper or magazine; new gadgets, new clothes, property, makeovers, cars, travel experiences, all suggesting that having them will make life more fun and interesting, bring you greater freedom or bring some other positive change to your life. Consumerism in its most odious form is a great deceiver, a counterfeit God.

Men’s fragrances for example, typically promise to bolster fledgling masculinity, making you more ‘attractive’ to find a meaningful relationship. How sad that so many men are misled into this trap. The ad-guru’s of our day falsely portray masculinity (and attraction) not as something that’s cultivated over many years, but as something that can be bought for a couple hundred dollars. See through the propaganda. Consumer products might give you ‘image’, ‘status’ or praise by the truckload, but they hold no claim to deep meaning. True happiness and fulfilment will never be on sale in your local department store.

What makes consumerism even more perverse is that it capitalises on unhappiness. To get you to buy their perfume, Gucci subtly make you dissatisfied with yourself. This dude is more attractive, more glamorous, more muscular, more masculine, better with women. To Joe Bloggs spipping on his Fosters, he’s dismayed that he’s none of these things. The solution? No don’t be who your are and accept the way you already look, spend more money to try to be something you’re not. Consumerism encourages us out of ourselves, to want to have other lives, to be someone else. That it’s usually pretty expensive exacerbates this misery, by making people feel poor.

Might we take some advice from The Compleat Angler (1653), Issak Walton’s philosophical treatise on angling. He tells of how anglers pity the ‘money getting men’ of the world, ‘men that spend all their time, first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it, men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busy or discontented’. Anglers on the other hand ‘enjoy a connectedness above the reach of such dispositions’. You need not take up fishing, but it’s sound advice to treat consumerism and all its trappings with more scepticism than we often do.

The trick is to consume, but don’t let consumerism become your master. Have desires and enjoy material things - buy perfume, drink Chateau Rothschild, drive heinously expensive sportscars - but don’t let them dictate your life and certainly don’t make them the wellspring of your happiness. As Astrippus put it, ‘the best thing is to possess pleasures without being their slave, not to be devoid of pleasures’. 

Yet so entrenched is consumerism in the West, people are seldom aware of the mastery its attained over their hearts and minds. To treat it as your god, let it define you shape you and mould you, is the road to serfdom. The truly free man can dabble with it, indeed live amongst it, yet he knows this is not where his treasure lie. He’s no neo-puritanical hermit, but he skilfully and mindfully taken the ‘middle path’.