More thoughts on consumerism

“Even people who are not miserable to begin with may become spoiled and lost in mindless, obsessive consumption. That is what mindless and thoughtless people do when they become rich. They become mindless, thoughtless rich people.”
John R. Schneider. The Good of Affluence: Seeking God in a Culture of Wealth. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002. p. 39.

If you don’t have interiority to begin with, getting and spending money to entertain yourself may only make you unhappier. That’s what I think that means.

It's because of a type of colonization. What's marketed to us invades our brains.

"...the search for self [has] always been shaped by marketing hype, whether or not [we] believed it or defined [our]selves against it. This is a side effect of brand expansion that is far more difficult to track and quantify than the branding of culture and city spaces. This loss of space happens inside the individual; it is a colonization not of physical space but of mental space."
Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York: Picador, 1999), p. 66. Quoted in Tom Beaudoin. Consuming Faith: Integrating Who We Are with What We Buy. Lanham, Md.: Sheed and Ward, 2003. p. 5.

READ: The Life and Death of the American Mall: The indoor suburban shopping center is a special kind of abandoned place. Atlas Obscura. Matthew Christopher. January 10, 2024

It's easily digestible. It becomes a comfort. It replaces other parts of ourselves that feel harder or more challenging, even if they would be more nourishing or are sometimes necessary.

"And over espresso on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, we agreed that the reason people got so crazy around Christmas was that they ignored the solstice, and just when they should be allowing themselves to be pulled into that primal sense of darkness they spaced-out at the peak of consumerism."
Thaisa Frank. A Brief History of Camouflage. Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1992. p 142.

Of course, "Human life does not exist to serve the brand economy. The brand economy should serve human life and flourishing." (Tom Beaudoin. Consuming Faith: Integrating Who We Are with What We Buy. Lanham, Md.: Sheed and Ward, 2003. p. 67.)

It becomes a "consumption treadmill." (Michael Lerner. The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. p. 319.)

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not a new wearer of clothes." (Henry David Thoreau, "Economy," Walden)

Simply fleeing the influence of consumer culture doesn't avoid the problem, since "there's nothing more bourgeois than being afraid to look bourgeois." (Andy Warhol) The problem has to be solved on another level. Once exposed to the culture, it is part of us, and we have to confront it head-on.

That might mean deleting the influence. “The billboard needs no regulation and no planning — all it needs is abolition." (Benton McKaye, "To Keep Malignant Growths Off Our Highways," Boston Evening Transcript, Feb 21, 1928.) Notice: Not avoid the billboard, not pretend the billboard doesn't exist, but abolish the billboard. It's a change in our shared world we have to help bring about.

It's possible to change everything. You can literally just stop.

"I know several ladies in England who refuse to drink sugar in their tea, because of the cruel injuries done to the Black People employed in the culture of it at the West-Indies."
Quobna Ottobah Cugoano. "Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Humbly Submitted to the Inhabitants of Great-Britain." Published in Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, and other writings. (1787-1791) Ed. Vincent Carretta. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. p. 102.

What we think of as normal has been created by someone. Some of these fictions can be seen through and dropped.

"...he [Santa Claus] used to dress in many different colors, until Coca-Cola's massive advertising budget helpfully clarified that he comes down the chimney only in their colors. That's right, the original war on Christmas was not fought by atheists but by American Protestants in the early colonial days who objected that only Papists would indulge in such a thing — and the various commercial accoutrements were gradually added on to make the holiday more palatable to them."
Greg Epstein. Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. William Morrow, 2009. p. 199.

On the other hand, just stopping doesn't entirely shift the power balance in your direction.

"But as law professor and Master Switch author Tim Wu says, "The rise of networking did not eliminate intermediaries, but rather changed who they are." And while power moved toward consumers, in the sense that we have exponentially more choice about what media we consume, the power still isn't held by consumers."
Eli Pariser. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You. Penguin Press HC, May 2011.

It might mean a riot. I don't know.

"Urban rioting was merely the underside of American consumerism..."
Jim Wallis. The Call to Conversion: Why Faith is Always Personal but Never Private. Revised and Updated. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005. (Originally 1981.) p 40.

See also: "10 'Successful' Reflections". It's a 4-minute read on Medium.