From Victor Lebow in the
Journal of Retailing
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 satisfactions,
our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social
acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The
very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive
terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and
accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and
his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car,
his pattern of food serving, his hobbies.
These commodities
and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require
not only “forced draft” consumption, but “expensive” consumption as well. We
need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever
increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with
ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.
The home power tools and the whole “do-it-yourself” movement are excellent
examples of “expensive” consumption.
What becomes clear is that from the larger viewpoint of our economy,
the total effect of all the advertising and promotion and selling is to create
and maintain the multiplicity and intensity of wants that are the spur to the
standard of living in the United States. A specific advertising and promotional campaign,
for a particular product at a particular time, has no automatic guarantee of
success, yet it may contribute to the general pressure by which wants are
stimulated and maintained. Thus its very failure may serve to fertilize this
soil, as does so much else that seems to go down the drain.
As we examine the concept of consumer loyalty, we see that the whole
problem of molding the American mind is involved here.
This quote is often used to capture the mindset behind the birth of consumer society. I presented this quote in class the other day and a student asked, "When did that become the law? Can we overturn that law?" These are interesting questions. There's a big difference between the laws of the government and the tacit yet very clear "laws" of culture and the economy. Her questions strike at the heart of the complexity of social change. How do we turn around the (sinking) ship that demands we "consume, burn up, ware out, replace, and discard" things at an "ever-increasing" pace? Libertarians would argue the nobody's holding a gun to our heads and making us do these things. But culture works differently than that. It's so easy to get swept up in its currents in ways that are invisible - even when one knows better. Ipads and pods, clothing and shoes, tools and couches, closet organizers and TVs. We have lusted after and/or purchased many of these things in our "eco-, minimalist" house.
Sad thing is, when you call slavery freedom, it begins to look like freedom. Free to buy. Free to choose a major - but no free education. Free to participate in consumer society - but not economic or political life, not unless you keep the status quo rolling. These are startling realizations for some. All of it makes me angry. We are sacrificing our very existence in the name of toxic, plastic bullshit.
