My parents have been on a furniture spending binge. Searching the internet for a good bargain on a sofa, a loveseat, or a table. But they don't need more furniture. I asked them why they were so interested in acquiring more furniture. My father responded that they found a good price. That isn't really a reason, but this mindset drives people. They hunt for value where it simply doesn't exist. Why did consumerism become a religious obsession?
The economy is built on people buying stuff they don't need.
Part 1: Feel Good Inc.
The reason consumerism is rampant is due to excessive amount of money and time spend on marketing and advertising. The advertisement, popularized at the turn of the century, became the disease that infected the global zeitgeist. Why does advertising work? The Feels. They expose your insecurities and provide a safety blanket for you to hide them away. Good people buy stuff to become better people. If something did not make us feel good in some way, why would we ever purchase that product or engage in that activity?
So, people started buying to make themselves feel better. And this worked temporarily. But those companies knew how to find ways to expose your weaknesses and take care of them. They played you and willingly you bought in. You needed a second television because your old television was not as capable of delivering crystal clear high-definition television. But what they were really delivering was a portal to renewed happiness. And most people are really happy when they buy something. But like the allure of a newborn puppy, the magic eventually wanes.
Part 2: The Graveyard of Prosperity
When you buy something, it usually holds some value, but that value is not retained. You buy a new television. That television serves your television needs, but when a new television is created, that television now serves your needs a little less. As we go through time, new, improved televisions reduce the value of your old television. Soon, that television becomes nearly worthless. Nobody wants an old television when they could have a better new television. Also, they happen to have old televisions themselves. Everybody does.
But we need to keep ourselves satisfied because our society through marketing and indoctrination (via education) has taught us to buy into the consumer model in order to make ourselves happy. Thus, we spend the money we work for to buy our happiness indirectly through objects that serve as methods of escape from our unhappiness. But we are unknowingly trapped in this cycle. The money we could use to escape the uncertainty that plagues us and keeps us from living life on our terms, is spend on temporary objects that keep us trapped.
We live in the most prosperous era of the human race, yet so many of us are stuck in the cycle that slowly kills us over time until we less resemble creative and innovative beings with a desire for exploration and more resemble manic-depressive addicts with a desire to fill the emptiness of our unsatisfactory lives with consumer goods and advertising. We are building ourselves really nice graves.
Part 3: Runaway as Fast as You Can
The consumer lifestyle is not easy to escape. The American dream has slowly been warped into some twisted expectation of individuals to prove their success with their wealth of objects and things rather than the value of their experience and the satisfaction of completing goals and chasing dreams. The goal is not to heal yourself of the consumer disease, but to feed it until it consumes you.
The issue with having consumerism as your personal philosophy or religion is that it has no greater purpose. Ultimately, buying stuff will not satisfy your desires. They offer brief moments of relieve, but when the drug wears off, you'll be looking for another deal, or working hard to buy that new car you want. But the philosophy is cyclical. There is no ultimate end. People desire meaning in their life, but the consumer is meaningless. Addicts can deny all they want, but insecurity, not happiness drives the mind of the consumer.
How does one escape the cycle and achieve enlightenment? I don't know how to achieve enlightenment, but escaping the cycle takes a mindset change. A change in philosophy. One that encourages running into adversity rather than looking for security blankets and buying our way to happiness. Let's be honest, that would be too easy. A fulfilled life is a challenge. To find it, we first need to overwrite our programming and become our own masters...