I’ve heard many characters–both real and fictional–talk about how the consumerism of Western culture will eventually lead to the destruction of society. Such illustrious figures as Fight Club’s Tyler Durden and time traveler about town John Titor have blamed the current (some see it) sorry state of the world and future very sorry state of the world on the fact that people “buy things they don’t need.”
God help me, I don’t see the connection between buying something that isn’t a survival essential and the decline of society. Can somebody kindly help me out?
I think part of it is the idea that comsumerism tends to encourage the satisfaction of individual and private pleasures over communication with one’s neighbours.
This is viewed as bad because it reduces awareness of neighbourhoods and the greater community, and therefore reduces the likelihood that the average person will become involved in, support, and help society to function.
If people are inside watching TV, for instance, they aren’t out getting to know their neighbours, watching the kids in the neighbourhood so that they stay out of trouble (both passive and active), or getting involved in local politics. Thus there are fewer eyes on the street to catch grafitti-makers and litterbugs; there are fewer people to represent local views during political decision-making.
Society becomes more susceptible to outside influence that may not have the community’s best interest at heart, such as gang members or political lobbyists.
BTW: “the smelly kids in class”? I don’t understand.
I think it’s a matter of degree and what your personal values are. I think most the people who decry consumerism are not suggesting that you must never buy anything not needed for survival, but rather merely that making such purchases the principal goal of your life is wrong.
There’s also matters of pollution and health at work as well. Drinking Coke may be cool, but drink too much of it and you will be an inert lard-butt. Similarly, it might be tempting to buy a kewl new jumbo-screen television set every four years, but then the old sets end up clogging the landfills.
Fundamentally, though, the idea of “excess consumerism == bad” seems like a retelling of Buddhist philosophy, which says that wanting things is the cause of pain and suffering, and the path to enlightenment is to eliminate your desire to want. Otherwise known as “the best things in life are free.”
Consumerism is driven by Capitalism, which is evil: it requires evermore growth to prosper, which is why we are currently seeing the explosion of international conglomerates. It is driven by the concept of “Expand or die”. It eats natural resources with no view to sustainability. It promotes greed, which promotes immoral and illicit behaviour (CEO paid million-dollar bonus despite company making huge loss, national leaders give tax cuts to the rich). The acquisition of capital (e.g. money, property, possessions) is the motive force, and if you don’t have enough capital you can be eaten up by a bigger entity (e.g. Microsoft); eventually there will be a few bloated companies owning everything.
Capitalism acts against econo-diversity (in the same way a noxious weed can take over an ecosystem and destroy biodiversity).
I absolutely agree. I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a communist, but I’m definitely inclined towards the left. Super-liberals (or, as I like to call them, my fellow pinko leftists) usually include punk rockers and hippies, who don’t like to bathe so much. Which might make you think only smelly people hate consumerism.
Here’s how I understand it, from my reading of Wealth and Democracy by Kevin Phillips. Apologies if I oversimplify.
American consumers like to buy stuff, so capitalist Americans hire working-class Americans to make stuff to sell to American consumers.
Capitalist Americans get rich, working-class Americans make a decent living.
Eventually, capitalist Americans figure they can get even richer by hiring cheaper foreign labor and laying off working-class Americans.
Working-class Americans become poor Americans, turn to depressingly low-paying service economy jobs, playing the lottery, and/or crime. American society crumbles.
Cheap foreign labor likes to buy stuff with the money it earns working at its cheap foreign factory, etc. Cycle repeats.
The book spends several chapters examining the historical parallels between the rise and fall of Spanish, Dutch, and English power, and the rise and possible fall of American power.
Greed can be a good thing in that it motivates people to work. (No work, no cash, no toys.)
However, greed alone is bad for society. In an everyone for themself mentality, you’ll just get a bunch of slackers trying to milk and use everyone.
Greed, or consumerism, needs to be mitigated by mutual cooperation, team work, and sacrifice. And if people won’t do that on their own, then you need to redistribute the wealth through taxation.
Consumerism/capitalism is somewhat driven by immediacy and may not be the best system in the world for deciding to make ‘necessary’ sacrifices or long-term plans.
Some of you may have read of the concept of Peak Oil. That is, some would say that the earth’s finite amount of oil is fast reaching it’s half-empty point, and once it does, the remaining oil will require more energy to pump/process than it would yield. Estimates of the breaking point vary from ten years ago to twenty years from now. Something like that anyway…
As I understand, oil is needed to make most plastics. So if we spend all our resources collecting silly things we WANT (most of the made of plastics)… less resources for things we may NEED down the line.
oil/plastic is surely not the only example that would fit.
[ul]
[li]Whales hunted to extinction and near extinction for their blubber, bones, etc.[/li][li]Rainforests chopped down for wood or for farming.[/li][li]Fish catches falling below economic levels because stocks have been over-harvested.[/li][li]Price-gouging during special events (hotels and restaurants raising their rates for the Olympics) causing misperceptions of the host city (“Sydney is SO expensive”).[/li][/ul]
Free markets now waste resources? Why would greedy capitalist pigs put one extra smidgeon of resources into the production of a product than is necessary? It was claimed by various government entities that we had 10 years left of oil reserves in 1914, 1939, 1951 and we still hear it today yet proven oil reserves increase every year. Not only do we find more oil, not only do we find ways to extract previously unprofitable sources profitably, but we also use what we have much more efficiently. Since the 70’s, cars have become 60% more fuel efficient, appliances about 50%, home heating 40%, and we create twice the amount of wealth per unit oil. The next round of technologies for oil extraction are expected to increase proven reserves by 50%. Shale oil alone can sustain us for the next 250 years. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Thankfully, we have greedy capitalist pigs who are so desperate for a buck that they will actually research new forms of energy and ways to improve the efficiency of existing forms–those dirtbags! Bottom line is that the technology gains that result from corporate greed conserve more natural resources than the wealth that allows such research consumes. Economics is non-linear and can’t be extrapolated in a technological vacuum. And if boofy bloke cares to make a remotely intelligent, fact-based assertion, I’ll be happy to comment.
