Is consumerism a bad thing?

Great Debates
1

Consumerism probably began as showing off a handful of carved ivory beads, some nice extra pelts, and a bigger cave painting. It showed that you and your tribe were so successful at hunting and gathering that you had extra time to make froo-froo and bric-a-brac that weren’t absolutely necessary for survival. Other tribes gave you respect, and your children had first dibs on potential mates.

But where are we now?

In Your Money or Your Life Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin make the assertation that the reason many people feel empty and lost is because they place to high a value on having physical possessions to prove their success. Basic needs - especially in a first world country like the US - can be met by working around 20 hours a week. Past that, you begin to lose touch with the things that really matter - family, community, spirituality, and so on.

At the end of the Industrial Revolution, they assert, we had the means to satisfy material needs with the same amount of work those hunter-gatherer tribes put in to meet their own. Everything after that should have been gravy. Instead, what we have now is an ever increasing one-upmanship of consumerism and materialism. With very few exceptions, to be successful is to have a large amount of wealth, to own a large house, multiple cars, take outrageous vacations, wear designer clothes, and always stay on the cutting edge of fashion. The work it takes to secure these things can easily preclude less tangible forms of success.

Consumerism is wasteful of resources - finite resources that we must all share. If it’s the only yardstick to measure personal success by (and somedays it feels that way to me), we run the risk of devaluing precious parts of ourselves that have nothing to do with material goods.

Certainly the drive to be successful is a boon to humankind. Would we have anywhere near as many doctors and scientists and artists and inventors if there weren’t the spur to succeed? But can we find less pernicious ways to evaluate our own success and that of others?

Where should we, as individuals, draw the line? At what point does the accumulation of material wealth get in the way of physical/emotional/familial/societal health? What would it take to change society and culture using material wealth as a measure of success?

2

Wow… Good question!

I dunno. :wink:

I just want to mention that I read a good book, Bob the Gambler, by Frederick Barthelme. Actually, I didn’t think it was a very good book, but it was interesting.

It explores what happens to a plain Joe who loses everything at the casino. He and his wife and daughter are forced by their mistakes to find a much simpler life, and are surprised to discover that they are happier there.

3

Of course consumerism is a bad thing, unless you like ecological devastation, the treating of people as commodities, avarice, envy, and lots of other ills.

I don’t believe much that we can “draw the line” in most discussions, but I would venture that any time we buy something that we know we don’t need, won’t use, and will barely remember even purchasing, that we have crossed that line.

In that advertising fuels consumerism, I think that commercials are generally much worse (in an ethical sense) than anything that else on television.

Bucky

4

Bucky**:
That is like saying that hemlock is the worst poison…

As Ernie Kovacs put it, “Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done.”

5

…I’ll buy that. :smiley: (Running away now…)

6

phouka:

I agree with this assertion; however, I think that there is a causation issue to be dealt with first. We have two observations (which, of course, are debatable):

  1. People are confusing the acquistion of goods with the acquistion of happiness.
  2. Much of public discourse revolves around these material goods.

I think there is an implicit assumption on the part of a lot of people that item 2 is causing item 1. I disagree. I would say that item 1 is causing item 2. If people were more interested in finding “internal” happiness than in goods, then public discourse would be more focused on this issue. In fact, I think more and more people are becoming interested in this–thus, the success of people like Deepak Chopra and books like The Celestine Prophecy.

I can also agree that a less wasteful approach to life in general would be a good thing. However, to attack consumerism itself in order to achieve this would be akin to attacking mobile home owners in order to prevent tornadoes.

I tend to focus a lot on allowing people to find happiness in their own way. Don’t have any pat answers for teaching them how to do it.

-VM

7

Consumerism is a fabulous means of distributing wealth while providing motivation for continued success. I’m a big fan of greed. Greed is what makes me a productive member of society. Of course there’s good greed and there’s bad greed. My simple mind separates the two as follows:

Good Greed: “I want more than what I have.”
Bad Greed: “I want more than what you have”

I reward my sense of greed by acquiring those things that society and I have determined that I have earned. You see, society and I have this lovely arrangement wherein I can take anything I want from society provided that the value of that which I take is not greater than the value of what I provide to society. In this arrangement, I estimate the value of what I take to be equal to the value of myself up to that particular point in time when I am thinking about my stuff.

Bad things happen when a person begins to see the value of their stuff as being greater than his own total value as a member of society. That’s when we start to define ourselves by what we own or can own. That’s when our stuff begins to own us.

When our stuff owns us, it makes us do funny things. We start to disregard our condition and that of our environment for the sake of ownership. We take more stuff regardless of any real desire or need for it. We pollute our world and, in turn, our bodies because the making of new, shiny stuff and disposal of old, dull stuff becomes more important than health.

The makers of shiny, new stuff are not to blame when this happens. They are simply providing shiny, new stuff to a society that seems to think it needs more shiny, new stuff. That’s how they are contributing to society.

The ones to blame are those that lost sight of their personal worth - those who were blinded by the shininess of new stuff. They can only be stopped and helped when they find a better, more fulfilling way to interact with society than running a silly race by themselves to own the shiniest new stuff.

I apologize for excessive touchy-feely-cuteness of this post. I’m not quite myself today.

8

Just wondering if anyone else is enjoying the irony of seeing people using an internet message board to decry the consumption of resources above basic needs.

9

Is consumerism a bad thing ? – for whom ?

For the planet – yes, of course it is unless stocks of whatever are replenished/replaced. Hence, sustainability. And pollution, in all it’s forms, is slowly killing the planet – and us….the ozone, air quality, ocean pollution, pesticides in the food chain. Each is a product of consumerism.

For individual consumers – Do you live to work or work to live ? Consumption is forced at us every minute of every day through advertising that hits all the right psychological notes. I suspect the way we each individually deal with that issue determines our degree of ‘need’.

10

Just wondering how many of you anti consumerist folks are subsistence farmers.

The problem of finding happiness and contentment was a problem far before the industrial revolution. But only after we had to stop worrying about starving to death could so many of us spend so much time whining about being unhappy.

The world is a great place. Enjoy it, find love and buy whatever you can afford.

11

The problem is that we’re increasingly thought of, and think of ourselves, as consumers rather than citizens. Nikes? Microwaves? Cable TV? Latter-day breads and circuses, I feel. As Ben Barber puts it, we’ve got the “choice of toppings in a world where chain store spuds are the only available fare.” Consumerism, in short, is subsuming all other aspects of culture.

By the way, Barber’s article, “Democracy at risk: American culture in a global culture” (World Policy Journal, Summer 1998), is a fantastic read. I recommend it to everyone.

12

Basic needs - especially in a first world country like the US - can be met by working around 20 hours a week.

  1. What exactly do you mean by “basic needs”? Do you mean just above poverty level, or living in conditions that the average person would consider reasonably comfortable.

  2. Working 20 hours a week at what sort of job?

Past that, you begin to lose touch with the things that really matter - family, community, spirituality, and so on.

Not necessarily - Having a yacht capable of crossing the Pacific Ocean, a mansion half the size of the White House, or any fancy thing along those lines doesn’t autimatically preclude staying in touch with what really matters.
tymp:

Bad things happen when a person begins to see the value of their stuff as being greater than his own total value as a member of society. That’s when we start to define ourselves by what we own or can own. That’s when our stuff begins to own us.

Ah, now there’s a much better definition of when things start to break down - It’s not how much stuff you have, it’s how much you value your stuff.

13

Sigh… there’s nothing more pathetic than rich, comfortable people (and let’s face it, compared to 99.9% of the people who have EVER lived, the average American is rich and comfortable) complaining about how empty our rich, comfortable lives are!

Of course, when people talk about “consumerism,” they’re almost never talking about THEMSELVES! What they really mean is, “Look at that guy over there- HE has too much!”

People who have no intention of giving up their own color TVs, computers and central air conditioning units feel free to gripe about OTHER people’s S.U.V.s!

People who live in nice apartments, filled with the latest IKEA products fee free to diss those who buy jewelry or furs.

In short, “consumerism” is just another way for people to feel morally superior to people they don’t like.

14

No, I’m talking about myself - and my family, and my buds, and my coworkers, and most of the other people around me.

I don’t have anything against the idea of owning nice things, or of living above the poverty level, or of spending your money exactly how you please. But I do wonder if perhaps the yardstick we use to measure “success” doesn’t cause more trouble than it’s worth.

What, exactly, is enough? Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs state that once our basic, physical needs - food, shelter, sleep, sex - are satisfied, we become aware of other needs. Emotional, and once those are satisfied, cognitive, then aesthetic, then self-actualization. Are we getting stuck accumulating things that only meet our physical needs, confusing them with what would satisfy higher needs?

I think it’s disgenuous to say that just because we’re not in imminent danger of being eaten by a predator or freezing to death that we have no reason to complain. We are more than what our reptilian brain governs. There’s a wide gulf between acknowledging that we are consumers and saying that because we are consumers, we don’t ever have to consider the consequences of consuming resources far beyond what would satisfy our needs. The former is realism - after all, all living things are consumers in one form or another. The latter is insanity.

There’s also no hypocrisy in wondering whether or not the material wealth that makes us so much better off is beginning to get in the way of higher needs, like self-actualization. We can recognize that both a famine victim and a clinically obese person are unhealthy. Why can’t we recognize that, along with an abject poverty, our obsession with material aquisition is unhealthy?

Again, what is enough? Is it enough to have a roof over your head, food on the table, and clothes on your back? What does it take to provide that these days? If you or I or a group of us decided to eschew the home theater, the SUV, the Tommy Hilfigger designer bedroom set, the cat dye, and the Ikea bookshelves, are we better able to address emotional, cognitive, aesthetic, and self-actualization needs? It’s not so much that the owning of material possessions is a bad thing, but aquiring them and caring for them takes up an enormous amount of precious time and energy - time and energy that could perhaps be spent on better things.

15

Two remarks.

  1. Is consumerism a bad thing? - compared to what?

  2. It is a myth to suppose that increasing wealth has to come from the depletion of resources. An economy can grow in terms of its output and the value of that output without any change in its use of natural resources.

Crudely speaking, as output grows, new production techniques which are more specialised and use fewer resources become viable. There is nothing inherently resource depleting about increasing levels of consumption.

picmr

16

sdimbert: Did you kknow that the inspiration for Barthleme’s book was his own gambling addiction? He and his brother gambled away a $200,000 inheritance from their parents in riverboat casinos. These guys are university professors, so 200K ain’t no chicken feed to them, neither.

I agree that commericals are the most dangerous thing on television. It freaks me out how little kids want things so badly. We were not allowed to watch much TV when I was a child (only Saterday morning cartoons, so mom and dad could “sleep in”) and I do not remember being as consumed by my desire for more stuff as the children of my friends are. I was at the Field Mueseum in Chicago a few months ago and had my cousin-in-law’s four year old with me. They have the dinosaur exhibit designed so that at the end you are forced to walk through the gift shop. As soon as we came into it, I started running, but it was too late. The kid was like a pavlovian dog–conditioned. He stared going “I want. . . I want. . .I want. . .” He didn’t know what he wanted, merely that there was a shop and that he know that meant he really wanted, craved, something. it was erie. I know many small children these days that have been conditioned the same way. I think that when the need to get something is the driving force, as oppposed to the desire for a particular thing, some sort of line has been crossed. Compulsive shoppers are like this: I have friends who go shopping when they feel out of sorts without any of idea of what they might want to buy. I think this is a behavior that is ultimitly destructive, not because material things are inherently evil, but because it drains your personal finite resources and forces you to not obtain other things that you might want/need more legitimatly–people that impulse shop until they are in severe debt, so that they cannot afford car repairs, or other such neccesities.

17

So, please tell me just what we have run out of? Whale oil? We did run out of whale oil, but a viable substitute was developed before that happened so when we ran out no one even noticed.

As for consumerism killing the planet through pollution, I don’t believe that’ll ever happen. What is far more likely, in my opinion, is consumerism will extend even further to purchase of real estate. Once you have a personal stake in a valuable piece of private property, I think you’ll not want it spoiled by pollution. Interestingly, the nations with the highest level of “consumerism” have less pollution than many of the third world nations.

Finally, this may be a bit impertinent, but I always see this debate as a statement of “Now that I’ve got mine, I’m gonna make sure you can’t get yours.” Astorian touched on this just a couple posts ago. Even the poorest, most destitute welfare recipient in the U.S. is richer than three-quarters, or more, or the rest of the world’s people. Do you propose that we establish a median subsistence level? Perhaps we could all live like the citizens of Mexico City.