Consumed
Mini-documentary The Story of Stuff reports that today, the average person in the US consumes twice as much as he or she did 50 years ago. Do we really need twice as much as we did in the 1950s?
All arguments about what we truly need aside though (not to mention the impact of all this consumption and disposal on our environment), it is still interesting to look more closely at this phenomonenon–sometimes called ”hyper-consumerism” or “consumer culture” and its origins and effects. As The Story of Stuff tells us — All this consumption “didn’t just happen, it was designed…”
Shortly after World War II, business and government leaders sat around figuring out how to boost the economy. A retail analyst named Victor LeBeau articulated their solution in a simple, and dare I say brilliant way: “Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever accelerating rate.”
What a loaded statement! Take the word rituals for example. Bet you just thought those referred to weddings or funerals, rain dances, high school proms, or virgin sacrifices (the last not to be confused with the prior 
). Not so.
A ritual can be any event, any set of actions, with which we ascribe some symbolic meaning–conscious or unconscious. Graduation is a ritual. Dinner time prayers are a ritual. But so are handshakes, or bowing, or exchanging business cards. And so are back-to-school clothing shopping or buying your fiancee that giant two-carat diamond ring (And remember, the guideline–it should be worth two months of your salary!)
From the commercialism of Christmas, to spring fashions, which are different from summer fashions, and so forth, we find ourselves as humans entrenched in a cycle of shopping/eating/using/displaying rituals which begin at birth and end when they put you in the ground in that $5000 handcrafted coffin–which you won’t even get to enjoy. (And don’t even let me get started on the man who who ordered up a custom coffin meant to resemble his favorite beverage.)
As for “our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction”–are we seeking these in consumption?
You bet your $75 yoga outfit we are.
From “soccer moms” to amateur golfers to single women in their twenties who aspire to the lives depicted in “Sex in the City”. Whether it be a flashier SUV, a better set of clubs, or the latest kitten heels–none of these people are exempt from the desire–no, the need–to shop to better perform within their chosen (or is it designated?) roles.
Could it be now that to some extent we now purchase our identities?
It’s no secret–the difficulty, yet the growing desire, to “keep up with the Joneses”, (or the Patels or the Wangs for that matter). If you are reading this, chances are you also live in a society where you may feel measured primarily not by your attitude, your values, or the way you live your life – but by what you own, what you buy, what you wear. And it’s not just the clothes we buy or the cars we drive–it’s our tastes and experiences we are judged for too–intangibles cultivated through purchase on the hierarchy of the right wines, the right restaurants, the right shools or university educations.
Having “enough” is a relative term, and the bar is set higher and higher virtually every year.
It is amazing to think about how our dissatisfaction with what we currently have, and our resulting longing for more, is all part of a grand plan of manufactured desire that simply, and beautifully, if you will, fuels the cycle of purchase, consumption and disposal, repeat. Purchase, consumption, disposal, repeat.
The Story of Stuff – website and full video may be found here.
