Most of the time I hear people disparage these as if their unpleasantness goes without saying, but I’ve never heard a real explanation for what’s so wrong with rampant shopping. Why is it so bad to want to amass a bunch of shiny new things?
All living creatures consume material. They must do so to survive. As I write this I am consuming the material substance commonly known as air. So on the face of it, there is nothing wrong with consumerism and materialism-- it is necessary.
The difficulty arises when people consume more material than they need. Buying a bunch of shiny new things is one example of this. Eating too much food is another.
I find wanton over-indulgence disgusting-- even though I have been guilty of it myself. The only question really is: how much is too much, and who should decide?
I suggest that the over-consumption itself is not really the problem. The reason for that over-consumption is.
I suspect that most are buying shiny new things either with the expectation that it will somehow fill some void that they perceive exists within them, or to impress others, which is really just another way to fill the void. Unfortunately, when the novelty of that shiny, new thing wears off, it becomes simply a dull, old thing. A shiny newer thing is now required.
None of these actually fill the void, but merely distract the person from its existence.
Plus the two terms are not one and the same thing, either, which is another thing those people pizzabrat hears seem to assume.
One can be a materialist and be very stoic and temperate and moral in his lifestyle. People who just want to grab large truckloads of cash and bling-bling and sex and will do anything and sell out anyone to get it are being greedy, or avaricious, not “materialistic”.
However, it just so happens the dominant philosophical and cultural trends in the West have tended to exalt idealism and spirituality to the detriment of realism and the material. Take Platonism and Christianity, who both set forth that the material world is real, but inferior to the also-real world of ideals. Many artistic movements such as the Romantics were really big on idealism as a saving grace, and let’s not even go into “magical realism”. A “materialist” thus is viewed as someone who only lives for the tangible here-and-now.
The one major sociopolitical movement of the industrial age that made “materialism” overtly a cornerstone of its worldview was Marxism – and the failures and excesses of communism may have poisoned the well for “materialism” as a philosophy in the eyes of a large part of the world. Capitalism is just as materialistic, but it does not adopt it overtly as a doctrine about the meaning of life, so it gets a bye on that until someone finds an “excess”.
I suppose “consumerism” in its negative vibe refers to * consuming (nonnecessities) for the hell of consuming itself, as a form of personal validation*, and of the creation of “fabricated” needs and wants by the publicity industry. Where “Keeping up with the Joneses” becomes a value for its own sake, regardless of whether it makes sense for the Smiths or whether the Joneses are even in the race themselves. This to many people is (a) wasteful (b) a craven abdication to being a drone of the powers that be © an empty value-set upon which to build self-esteem. Special opprobium is reserved for when people get indoctrinated into the high-consumption lifestyle who really can’t afford it honestly, and thus either live on maxed-out credit or turn to illicit means.
But beyond the terminology, it may help to think of it as a situation where some people define their selves and their worth as a function of BEING vs HAVING. Someone whose self is a function of who/what he knows he IS, can have little or can have Gates’ billions, and he still IS, and his buying a Rolls doesn’t change it. Someone whose self is a function of what people can see he HAS, is nobody if he doesn’t have the goods or if the Joneses don’t care, and in any case is forever unrealized as a person as there is no way he can ever have one of everything.
Now, using “materialism” to define the latter worldview is, like I said, a stretch, and “consumerism” seems specifically coined with a negative connotation right off the bat.
Maybe we need better semanticists…
It depends.
Do you have a good job? Let’s say you make 200k a year. You want to go out and spend your salary on bimbos, red sports cars, plastic surgery, designer clothes and vacations. Fine. Be my guest.
Now let’s say you make 20k a year. You want to go out and charge up a bunch of credit cards on the same things. This is bad because you will probably default on all of your credit cards, which means that somebody out there is going to have to pay for your mess: namely, responsible credit card holders. Credit card companies claim to “write off” bad debts but let’s think about it: some of these places charge 20% interest. They aren’t losing money in the long run because they are nailing everyone else with sky high interest. Surely part of this has to do with people who go out and charge up thousands of bucks worth of “shiny new things.”
I have no problem with people who have a taste for expensive things. I personally don’t see the point in a $50,000 car, but hey: it’s your money. I’d never spend more than oh, 20k on a car but you can bet your ass I’d build a half million dollar house if I had the means.
The second you die, though, you leave everything behind. I’m all for having nice things but in the long run it seems sort of silly to work yourself into an early grave to gain things that you can’t take with you when you leave this world.
It’s all about moderation. IMHO.
Well, there are also environmental issues created in the production of shiny new things.
However, my experiences with ‘shiny new things’ is that it never seems to be enough. There’s always some newer, shinier object out there waiting to replace what you just bought.
In my own life, I have been doing my best to get things back to a more simple level. I used to love to go shopping for gadgets and fun stuff all the time. Don’t get me wrong, it is fun to go shopping, but I found that the fun wore off quickly and was back to shopping for more.
Now it seems, I buy less and actually want less. sigh I must be getting old. 
If you can do it within your means, I see nothing wrong with the questions posed by the OP.
I do it, I’m not in debt and I’m having tons of fun.
You only live once and all that jazz…
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with consumerism. I do think there’s something wrong with consumerism to the exclusion of everything else.
But that’s true of most everything.
In and of itself, nothing. Materialism and consumerism can lead to a couple of things though:
-Wastes resources. While in the grand scheme of things, there are too few Hummers on the road to make a significant issue of it, buying stuff for the sake of buying it is wasteful - environmentally and financially.
-The “goldan handcuffs” - Basically, you go to work for a company that pays a high enough salary that you get a taste of the high life. You want more so you work harder so you get more stuff so you have to work harder to pay for it …etc.etc. Next thing you know, you are working 100 hours a week for a carrot you can never eat. (think Charlie Sheen in Wall Street)
-Keeping up with the Jones - Buying crap just because you want your neighbors to feel your juice.
-Emphesizing style of substance - An empty boxis still empty, no matter how pretty the bow.
By the same token, the second you die, though, you leave everything behind - including all that money you saved up by not buying stuff.
See, here’s the problem. Ideally you want to die with a zero balance. Problem is you don’t know when you are going to die so you need to strike a balance between spending money stuff and saving for the future.
What’s wrong with consumerism and materialism?
Well, gee… for me to tell you that, youre gonna have to pay me first. I’ll send you copies of my answer so you’ll have something to look at.