Read This Before You Spend Your Hard-Earned Money on Stuff You Don’t Actually Need
The evil side of “Consumerism” and the drive behind it
“We live in a society where pizza gets to your house before the police.”
_ Anonymous
If you frequently stop by the shopping mall to check on the latest arrivals in the market, or keep searching “trailer” on YouTube every once in a while, or walk to the market to get a pair of joggers and end up buying a cool t-shirt, superhero sunglasses and “the most cutting-edge, multifaceted, and water-resistant” smartwatch, you are not alone.
This is a prevalent behavior or I should say, a “behavioral disorder” identified as shopaholism by various study centers.
The interesting point is that it’s not your fault! At least, not completely. Neither is it an accidental outbreak or a social blunder, it is rather a deliberately designed phenomenon. It takes expenditure of billions of dollars every year to promote this heinous and despicable purpose.
For example, “According to market estimates, total media advertising spending the United States in 2020 would amount to 225.8 billion U.S. dollars. By 2024, the figure is expected to grow to 322 billion dollars.”
You will be surprised to know about the involvement of numerous factors behind your decisions in purchases and investments. The bitter and sad fact, that “it’s not us consuming, but we are made so,” will be explained in depth in the following, while a loud vivid picture of the whole scenario has been depicted in this single sentence:
“We’re not in an information age anymore. We’re in the age of social media manipulation, corporate surveillance, and consumerist propaganda.”
— Aral Balkan
What is Consumerism?
“Consumerism is the belief that personal well-being and happiness depends to a very large extent on the level of personal consumption, particularly on the purchase of material goods.” — Tim Kasser
Consumerism, as VP of Ford, John Bugas, has used it, is just another word for “Capitalism”. It’s also defined as the social and economic ideology that emphasizes the acquisition and consumption of goods and services as a primary driver of individual and societal well-being. It is a phenomenon that encourages individuals to engage in an ever-increasing amount of consumption, often driven by advertising and marketing tactics.
“Consumerism is not just about buying stuff, it’s about buying into the idea that the more we consume, the happier and more fulfilled we will be.” — Anna Lappe
Consumption is not a problem. Over-consumption is!
Everyone is familiar with Leo Tolstoy’s “How much land does a man require?”
It’s the story of a greedy materialist man “Pahom” who’s obsessed with acquiring more and more land. Pahom eventually learns of a neighboring tribe of people who are selling land at a very low price, and he sets out to purchase as much land as possible. However, the tribal leaders agree to sell Pahom as much land as he can walk around in one day, from sunrise to sunset, for a fixed price.
Pahom begins walking and measuring out the land, but becomes greedy and starts walking faster and farther than he originally intended. As a result, he ends up walking all day and covering much more land than he can handle.
Exhausted and near death, Pahom collapses at the end of the day, having realized that his obsession with owning more land has led to his own demise.
The story is a cautionary tale about the dangers of greed and the pursuit of material wealth at the expense of one’s own well-being and happiness.
It suggests that the amount of land a man truly needs is not determined by how much he can physically acquire, but rather by his ability to find contentment and happiness in what he already has.
Remember
Things are your tools to utilize, not the other way around.
You buy materials to make your life easier and happier, but when rather than just using the commodities and throwing them away or passing them to the needy later on, you begin loving them and get obsessed with them to a level that they become liabilities and start controlling you.
And then, even without realization, you start serving the very stuff you own, the stuff that are supposed to serve you. Soon, you start worrying and getting anxious about the protection and well-being of your possessions, that were actually meant to facilitate you with comfort and ease!
Before, you worked to get yourself a tension-free and happy life, now, you work to get more and more stuff, of which, more is always less, and less is never enough! So, in the end, you only get dissatisfaction, depression and hypertension.
“Consumerism is a way of life that is based on the belief that we can buy our way to happiness, but in reality, it only leads to more debt, stress, and dissatisfaction.” — Juliet Schor
Imagine you spend all your life in pursuit of money and materials, paying no attention to your beloved ones. In the end, you will realize that you have accumulated great wealth, but you are also likely to find yourself lonely, with no one to take care of you when you need it the most, and eventually die unattended and unwept.
The pursuit of material possessions can be a never-ending cycle, as there will always be something newer or better to acquire. The people who tend to love things and use people, instead of doing the opposite, often rue it when it gets too late to reverse it.
One might nod with a sigh of relief and decide to never over-consume. That’s the grave mistake most people make, because the line between consumption and over-consumption is so indistinct and vague, that, if you don’t pay attention, you never know when you have crossed it, especially in the modern age of distraction and manipulation, not to speak of scams and frauds.
Over-consumption might be alright too, as long as you do it consciously!
“Consumerism is a destroyer of values and a creator of false needs.”
— Pope Francis
“A man went to a store to buy a watch. The salesman showed him a watch that could display the time in five different time zones at once. Impressed, the man bought this multipurpose and relatively expensive watch and put it on his wrist. However, he soon realized that he only needed to know the time in one time zone — the one he was in.”
We live in a world where, sadly, consent is no longer a thing.
The usual prompt of “agree” or “accept” is nothing more than another even uglier vile layer of deception. We often shut out our friends when they rush us in choosing a dress or picking a color. We prefer to take our time, carefully consider our options, and make a decision.
Well, how is it possible for us to purchase what matches our needs, while we are surrounded, day and night, by the consumerist propaganda, inducing us with “telling whole lies out of half-truths”, into “buying things we don’t need, with money that we don’t have!” We are entirely stripped of our right to choose and decide for ourselves.
Yeah, it sounds more like some conspiracy theory, but let me take you through the various aspects of consumerism, supported by scientific studies.
Advertising and other methods of manipulation
Once you set your foot in the entrance of a shopping mall, you easily get carried away by the ostentatious layout, cool temperature and calming music. Don’t take it as their kindness to comfort their customers, it rather is designed so to exploit them.
The colorful and flamboyant display of the forefront, with beautiful landscapes and decorative facades, catches you off guard. The variety of appealing items and advertisements, and now the day by day increasing diverse activities such as dining and entertainment, keep you immersed and you easily lose track of time in the, deliberately designed, absence of natural light, specially when the only thing that could wake you up, a public clock, is rare to find inside a shopping mall.
In his book “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole”, Benjamin R. Barber writes about the excessive advertisements:
“In the emerging world of total commerce, there is also advertising on parking meters, advertising on public buildings, advertising on so-called public noncommercial television, ubiquitous blimp-and airplane-borne (smoke generated) signage, naming opportunities on public buildings such as sports stadiums once associated with public figures, and advertising possibilities in outer space — once it is militarized, why not commercialize it as well?”
Thanks to the growing modern materialist values, advertising has evolved to become more advanced and targeted. Beside maintaining the old methods of placing an agent in a bar to persuade the individuals into consuming certain alcoholic beverages and also getting feedback for further improvement of the products, advertisers now use advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to gather information about consumers and their preferences, behaviors, and habits.
Advertisements can be seamlessly integrated into our social media feeds, search results, and even messaging apps, blurring the lines between content and advertising.
Holidays, formerly “holy days”, such as Eid, Christmas, Holi etc. along with secular holidays like Valentine’s Day, Labor Day… meant to be off days, are now turned into selling marathons, and once the profits began multiplying, the number of holidays never ceased to grow too, Teacher’s Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, President’s Day, Halloween, New Year and so on… all given their own unique commercial inflections, each offering, in Richard Woodward’s phrase, “a testament to the bottomless ingenuity of capitalism.”
In order to maintain the viewership, and keep the commercials running, the TV channels labor intensively and provide us with shocking “though not important” news, and amusing “though not relevant” stories, 24/7! And when they come short, they start to dissect every angle and laughably insignificant and trivial detail of a single event, not to speak of the “expert opinion on the issue”, and here we “the general public” confuse the commercial infotainment geared to commerce, with news and information.
A study “A Guide to Consumerism” by George S. Day and David A. Aaker in 1970, concludes:
“… as a result of the character of contemporary retail establishments, the vastly increased number of consumer products, and the misleading, deceptive and generally uninformative aspects of advertising and packaging, the consumer simply lacks the information necessary to enable him to buy wisely.”
The current situation where you can sell almost anything, with any quality, to any customer, through the advanced and highly persuasive techniques of institutionalized advertising, supported by modern technology, proves Nicholas Johnson’s point that in the modern world, “the products need people to survive, not the opposite.”
Advertising to Children
Benjamin R. Barber explains the different attitude of the kids and adults towards advertising:
“The younger the target consumer, the more effective the assault on time. While adults can mute, filter, or otherwise elude or ignore advertising, “the first survey of American children by Mediamark Research Inc. has found that children differ from adults in one way that should interest advertisers: most of them aren’t skipping TV ads.” They do not mute their sets during ads, and they do not time shift out of commercial space as adults do. Nearly 60 percent of 5,400 six-to eleven-year-olds said they watched ads the same way they watched programs.”
He further states:
“Since the younger demographic may not even recognize the difference between commercials and content, the two become commingled in children’s programming.”
Boston College cultural critic Juliet B. Schor writes:
“The United States is the most consumer-oriented society in the world…[and] the architects of this culture…have now set their sights on children…. Kids and teens are now the epicenter of American consumer culture.”
The infantilist ethos
“When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
— St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:11, the New Testament
Seeing the kids as potential consumers, who could be easily manipulated and persuaded into buying anything at any price, the business corporations thought why not stop the kids from growing and even turning adults to kids?! Pop-cultural Journalists have coined several terms to describe a new category of individuals who are perpetually adolescent, such as kidults, rejuveniles, twixters, and adultescents.
This agenda has been explained by Mr. Barber in his book under the title “Capitalism Triumphant and the Infantilist Ethos”:
“Thus, consumerism urges us to retrieve the childish things the Bible told us we had to put away, and to enter into the new world of electronic toys, games, and gadgets that constitute a modern digital playground for adults who, the market seems to have concluded, no longer need to grow up. Rather than employ schools to help children grow out of their toys, we import toys into the schools — video games and computers as “edutainment” teaching aids, as well as ad-sponsored TV in the classroom.”
Commodification
One can never be too greedy in the boom of materialism as culture. The excessive ambition and pursuit of material wealth and possessions, through any means possible, however devilish and malevolent it might be, is getting to be the new normal. After profiting from all the commodities available, they started capitalizing on things that were never sold as materials before.
“Things never before considered commodities — things that were free, unlimited, or beyond the pale of human commerce — have become commodities today,” writes James Ridgeway. “The oceans are being commodified oil drilling and offshore fishing rights are being auctioned…. The sky — the earth’s inner and outer atmosphere — is fast becoming a commodity and sold in bits and pieces.” Commodification’s process is progressive, and progressively corrupting to heterogeneity and the autonomy of other sectors. “Companies can participate in federal programs to buy and sell air pollution rights — in effect purchasing space in the atmosphere…. Now, parts of human bodies are commodities as well, from blood to eyes, kidneys, and hair… Efforts are being made to commodify not only living things, but…life itself, with biotech companies making ownership claims to genetically engineered life forms.” (Book: Consumed, ibid.)
Addiction (Compulsive Buying Disorder), and “The Fate of The Consumerist”
Being “commerce-friendly” can be a reason enough for any destructive evil to be commercialized. Knowingly, that “the worst kind of evil is its addiction,” the business corporations don’t refrain from exploiting it, even at the risk of the future of millions of human beings. Since the production companies prosper on the unbridled over-spending, if addiction to the products is the door, addiction to consumerism itself — to shopping — is the key!
The IIAR (the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery) counsels on its website:
“Compulsive shopping or spending, may result in interpersonal, occupational, family and financial problems in one’s life. In many ways the consequences of this behavior are similar to that of any other addiction. Impairment in relationships may occur as a result of excessive spending and efforts to cover up debt or purchases. Persons who engage in compulsive shopping or spending may become pre-occupied with that behavior and spend less and less time with important people in their lives. They may experience anxiety or depression as a result of the spending or shopping which may interfere with work or school performance.”
A blog on the “therecoveryvillage.com” with reference to a scientific study on Compulsive Buying Disorder (CBD), states:
“Shopping addiction statistics show that 6 percent of people in the United States struggle with compulsive shopping. One study found that the urge to shop was so strong that people bought something 74 percent of the times they experienced an urge to buy.”
In the United Kingdom, the website www.addictions.co.uk cites a 1998 Mintel marketing study that reports “almost one in four Britons admits being addicted to shopping,” with “twice as many women as men” saying that they “frequently set off on a shopping expedition even though they had nothing specific in mind to buy.”
All our daily activities are now associated with some sort of consumer product. It was not always the case. The children used to skip rope, play house and stick ball. The kids today no longer engage in any play that isn’t facilitated by a commodity. All their leisure occupations revolve around expensive gear, electronic video games, internet entertainment, etc. all of which require regular upgrade, resubscription and repurchase, due to the rapidly improving versions. The whole process is engineered to have high potential to addiction.
The Fan Culture
You might be familiar with the traditional saying, in the film Looking for Eric (2009): “You can change your wife, change your politics, change your religion. But never, never can you change your favorite football team.” And the reason is obvious, your admiration for that team has evolved over time into pure passion and extreme obsession that is beyond your control and cannot be manipulated or altered by any material inducement.
You would be quite disappointed to know that your favorite personality and team, whom you love unconditionally, exploit your sincere feelings dreadfully. Not to mention the advertisements on literally everything you see on and around them, whether that is a t-shirt, a cap, a pen, shoes, car, stadium etc., they promote every product and brand that pays enough, regardless of the interest of the public and the very fans who support them.
The modern corporations prosper not only on the fandom of celebrities, but also on the fandom of products. New methods have been developed to make the consumers fall in love with the products and companies. In fact, fans have become central in the creation as well as marketing of popular culture products, so much, that many commentators seem to equate a fan with a brand ambassador.
The book “Fan and Fan Cultures” authored by Henrik & Sara Linden has shed light on the issue as follows:
“In recent business and marketing literature, there is little agreement on exactly what consumers and customers are to be called — other than the tendency to label them anything but consumers or customers — with descriptors ranging from “followers” to “brand advocates” to “fans,” even raving “fans”. Even the few examples above indicate that there are different levels to being a consumer, ranging from following (taking a keen interest in) to advocating (influencing others and “talking up” the brand at every opportunity).” He further writes: “In this context, the “consumer-as-fan” is an “advertiser, entrepreneur, marketer, and producer” (Kozinets 2014, p. 170).”
Fashion
“We don’t need more clothes; we need a new perspective.”
— Orsola de Castro
We throw things, not because they’re not usable, but because they’re not fashionable and they have lost their social value, which is determined by the industrialists. When shopping once in a season didn’t meet their ever-expanding target revenue, they started creating more seasons; now, instead of two, we have 52 seasons a year! Novels and movies, along with Fashion magazines, play a key role in establishing new trends.
For the new fashion to replace the older one, it’s vital to get rid of what’s left from the previous trend. In order to achieve this, they wouldn’t hold back from any level of wickedness. A New York Times report depicts the issue as follows:
This new “carefully engineered” trend of weighing the worth of people by their fashion and possessions, on one hand, is making billions for the industries, and on the other hand, it’s pushing the public to the threshold of destruction. Trying to keep the pace with the quickly changing fashion, they tend to exceed their budget, ending up in debt and depression, and in some cases, in criminal activities.
New Models
You probably have guessed why this crowd of people is waiting in line for several days. Yep! Latest iPhone! Most of these people already have an earlier model, short of a few very insignificant features, such as dust resistance, dual-camera, face ID, wider screen, etc. These people were doing all OK, until, with the announcement of the newer model, all those phones became dissatisfying and useless overnight! So much, that they camp out for days to be the first to get their hands on the latest gadget. If this compulsive behavior isn’t severe addiction and madness, I don’t know what is.
This behavior is actually in advantage of the manufacturers and producers. This strategy is particularly effective in industries where technology and innovation play a significant role, such as electronics, software, and automobiles. Consumers are encouraged to constantly upgrade their products even when they don’t really need to, or in some cases, designing products with a limited lifespan to encourage customers to buy newer versions, a strategy referred to as “planned obsolescence”.
Social Media
Social Media, due to its addictive nature, has often been regarded as “the new cocaine” or “the digital cigarettes”. The author of “Generation-i: The Millennial Mindset” Aarick Knighton compares this phenomenon to “a car crash”:
“…for consumerist man is haunted by the fear of ‘missing’ something, some form of enjoyment or other. We have more important things to do, but social media has become like a car crash. For some reason we just can’t look away.”
Along with a ton of other evils, the social media is certified as a strong accomplice of the consumerist agenda. The main reason lies in the peer-pressure and the “like” formerly “become a fan” feature of the social media platforms. When the celebrities and elite businessmen with luxurious commodities, keeping a pretentious smile while the camera is rolling, upload the photos and clips of their exceptionally best moments, not to mention the excessively used beauty filters, individuals like us begin getting depressed and anxious and start seeking happiness and success in spending money, even with the expense of our mental and physical health. On the other hand, the tech giants keep introducing new features, apps and plug-ins, regardless of its disastrous effects on the consumers.
It’s disastrous effects on ecosystem
“The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world, right behind oil.” — Eileen Fisher
It’s funny and ridiculous how the same individuals supported by the industrialists and businessmen campaign for climate change and address the common people to stop using plastic bags, drive electric cars and eat vegetarian, while there doesn’t seem to be any change in the industrial sector, which is mainly responsible for pollution and global warming.
“The consumer society we’ve created in the past 50 years or so is a great achievement of capitalist society. But it’s also the consumer society that’s been the engine of destruction of the ecological system.” — Zygmunt Bauman
What do you learn from this?
1. Stop following the trends and going with the flow. Live an intentional life. Think twice before making a purchase, ask yourself: “Does this really add any value to my life?” Spend money on something you actually need, not something you’ve been constantly told that you need it.
2. Keep a balance between your budget and expenses. Learn to live within your budget. Refuse to take loan at all costs.
3. Reduce the use of social media to a minimum. Instead, develop the habit of exercising and reading daily.
4. Find a circle of people who inspire you, and motivate you to adopting a healthy lifestyle and good habits.
5. Participate in voluntary activities, something that is beyond material gain. a spiritual religion can be a source of inspiration in the modern world of materialism.
6. Keep your kids away from the social media.
To be realistic, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot to cover about the prevalent evil of consumerism. FOLLOW for more articles about productivity, mindfulness and social awareness.
