Consumerism is slicing the bigger and the bigger part of a daily behavior of many individuals. Probably it was always set up like that and will be. However, levels of the consumption are peaking to all-time highs in latest years and it is projected to increase even higher in the future. According to the World Bank data, World’s GDP per capita (PPP in $) in the period from the year 1990 till 2019 grew in constantly up trending straight line from 5,542.36$ to 17,677.55$. You might think that stopping to consume will mean the death of businesses, jobless people and increased survival struggles for many. However, on the other hand, we might expect quite different outcomes such as new transformations of corporate world and economy in general, smaller profits for business owners and more caring relations between individuals in the society. Paths of change can be various and from time perspective and from magnitude of the implementation.
Year of a COVID pandemic and almost constant state of different forms of quarantine, brought up to the surface some of my personal clearly dependable behavior traces. First one, how my being depends on a consumption. Second one, the consumption is a medicine for my insecurities, complexes and some other different psychological disorders. I caught myself buying not the second or third but probably the eighth pair of jeans. Moreover, even regular purchase of groceries became an every day tasting banquet with a dramatically increased food waste.
This state forced me to think more about a real necessity of shopping in all possible forms. I have taken into account a standpoint of buying or pre-ordering more or less things and services only those that I will be using and consuming in one month perspective. Even before buying anything, I keep bothering myself by asking in my head at least 5 times: do I really need it? Trying to reject purchases that won’t be relevant very soon or simply are duplicating my current possessions. And I would say, that it is a very hard work at least in the beginning. Just after several months of practice it became more or less a normal rejection process compared with a daily inside combat before.
Zygmunt Bauman in some of his works discussed importance of consumption to individuals of the modern society. This topic was quite extensively observed in “Work, Consumerism and the New Poor” (1998). Consumerism became a dominant self evaluation criteria in western world. What defines us, is what we can afford to consume.
Big part of today’s news in media are related to public topics such as politics, economy, pandemic and social issues and all of them are almost solely wrapped up into numbers and the logical reasoning. What gives us, on one hand a structural and clear understanding of information. On the other hand, even though most of the news are related with humans, affected by turbulent negative events, this kind of factual presentation form begins to hide our empathy. Everyday, all events are measured in unmistakable numbers such as: how many people died from and are infected with COVID, how much changed unemployment numbers, what are the GDP numbers and how much extra funding is provided by governments. It is really essential for this critical period but that type of rhetoric was communicated as long as I remember. It’s simply the regular norm of an information introduction to the society.
Another important aspect I believe is related with an economy model dominance in our daily life even though many people would say they don’t track any economy related news or understand an economics in general. Watching COVID crisis management and remembering financial collapse of 2008 one parallel closeness shows up. Every time the economy skids, most of the countries recklessly borrows and prints money to keep overwhelmingly consuming economy alive. Main focus is to return to growth stage, based on GDP output, as soon as possible. The dominant model of living becomes very closely tight up with buying things and using services alone or with others. Very likely, big part of our emotions will be compensated by the consumption instead of empathized. Equally, we often link the enforcement of positiveness and pleasant emotions with additional consumption actions.
It’s quite clear and understandable that the economy is defined by exact statistical data and it would be hard to imagine other types of unified measurements for it. But I’m beginning to feel that society for some reason is enforcing the same measurement scale and for my individual life. Shouldn’t we, as individuals, at least try to tie up our lives not only with a possession concept? Governments most often at least tries to guide our countries to prosperity and development paths. However, is the growth of GDP the only way to measure it? Do I, as a person, measure my life in the same manner: having more and consuming more?
An economy measurement question I’ll leave out of the scope of this article as it’s an extremely deep topic worth not only a separate article but probably a series of them. However willing definitely to return to this theme at some point in the future.
I’ll be focusing on my own viewpoint of the idea to evaluate individual existence in economic measurements. I’ll be following my personal perception of measuring my life attributes by a consumption prism. The reason of that is not to sound too generalizing and to keep this article in the frame of an opinion and feelings sharing without a scientific commitment. Even though, I dear to believe that it might be a quite common view if anybody would dedicate more time to think about that.
Constant materialistic approach emphasized by almost all environment that is surrounding me, more or less absorbed my personal understanding. I kind off overtook an economy and prosperity valuation method to my own life’s measurement scale. By a phrase “all environment” in the scope of this article I’m determining society components: public opinion, work environment, the understanding and worldview of my own family and friends.
For biggest part of my personality became completely natural to identify myself with the possessions I have. I sensed the pulse of relationships with other individuals by comparing my possessions and material potential with theirs. Striving to consume more became the new and regular form of compensation of personal complexes, self esteem, anxiety and fears. Communication with friends became solely grounded on sharing of all types of experiences related with different types of consumption interactions. Moreover, personal feelings became very well framed by the same consumption experiences or (non)-choices, related with material objects of life.
Looking closer at my environment, I have noticed that it’s extensively fulfilled with supportive reinforcements for consumption of goods, services or choices related with travel and places for dinning. By opening any social media application, reading newspapers or simply searching for any information online I was and I am overwhelmed with accurate direct promotions, opinions and content in general, fitting the way of my life almost by 100%. I don’t want to under valuate the convenience and information’s precision benefit that brought these new technological solutions. I’m served with exact information at exact time when I need it mostly. However, I’m also completely limited by my unchanging needs, which are mostly brought down on me by the majority, and overwhelmed by specially adopted content when I really don’t need it.
My gut feeling is more loudly suggesting that the economical models and definitions became my own measures of life’s quality. Satisfaction of my life became totally dependable on my possessions or plans and goals related with acquisition of additional possessions. However time from time the mind is able to notice that some catch exists in my perception of this consumer behavior.
Achievements of goals related with eventually additional possession of material assets was beginning to bring me satisfaction and joy for very temporary periods. Instead of filling the empty spots of a life’s puzzle it seemed that possessions were more and more extending the frames of the puzzle together with empty fields. Here comes the calming element for this expansion – we keep naming it a development and a progress. This state for me resembles the perpetual economy growth model that most of the countries are striving to achieve. My life becomes more and more dedicated to fulfill the economic model brought on me by the society. Also it causes to feel the guilt that I’m very odd and an outcast if I don’t follow the trend.
Going back to the country’s context, if something interferes into execution of the growth plan in most of the cases, governments turn to borrowing and investing capacity to push an extra gear on the growth engine. That puts even more consumption expectations for future generations. The ball of additional intentions to consume and spend more keeps rolling with a significant growth. And this ball isn’t somewhere aside from us, we all are small particles of the ball. I do understand that to stand with my individual life next to the ball is probably unrealistic to expect from my self but I am beginning at least to try to put the head out of it.
Could a western world’s society be engaged to the change of an individual possession approach? Probably no. Should the individual be achieving other things than just material ones? I would say, yes. These two opposite answers will be conflicting all the time, unless some major changes are made in the engine of economy. In this predefined contradiction each individual more or less will always stand alone against everyone else. If a person will be able to resist the temptation of accepting all rules of the imposed game of life, it mostly depends on his free will, courage and curiosity. From my own experience, an individual will likely face the situations where he will need to accept feelings related with a defeat. A reconciliation with that state changed my understanding of the battle field.
Above mentioned contradiction could be as well illustrated by an imaginable situation. Let’s assume that a critical mass of the society have changed it’s attitude to the consumption in general, also exclude a possibility for the economy to adopt to this situation by the boost of the export or attraction of direct foreign investments. Government will be trapped in a borrowing and money printing position, which won’t be a long lasting solution. Eventually the economy will face a stagflation and a contraction. Sharply decreased taxes collection will force government to reduce expenses significantly. From the prosperous western country or company viewpoint, I would say this would be one of the worst case scenarios except the war or major natural disaster. This kind of scenario in the mind of government, businesses and our minds will oppose the idea to change the attitude to the consumption. Maybe that’s why we need to work out on something absolutely new. But even before getting a wish to move forward, in the first place, we need clearly understand and evaluate where we are at the moment.
This topic might sound not so relevant for an individual who feels comfortably with his life dependencies of materialistic choices and possessions. However, everyone at least time to time should evaluate the bondage of self and life measurements with definitions and economic models provided by the society. Hopefully this sharing of my own experience of cutting umbilical cord from consumption will give a reader a chance to think about the issue at least once.