We’ve had the problem of perceiving money as having innate value for well over 5 centuries now, but the last 100 years has seen it taken to new heights. After the first war and especially after the second war, a consumer mentality took hold with a large growing middle class that could see itself emulating the elites lifestyle. Technological innovation has spawned this consumer dream that has now spread around the world, even to places that are barely out of stone-age technological cultures. I have said in earlier blog posts that the human desire for luxury and comfort is not necessarily a bad one because technology can ease the burden of hard living. The problem arises when it begins when we start to think of technology as a must-have mundane things that really serve no purpose other than self-aggrandizement.
During the 1950’s the erosion of the apparent need of real community pushed people into thinking that they could simply buy everything they wanted to make them happy and to pay for everything that needed doing. I don’t believe that people became selfish, but they did become less committed to each other within the community. If you were not family or a close friend then you simply became an ‘other’ to some degree. The environmental problems resulting from the manufacturing involved with all this exponential increase of technology were also becoming apparent, yet the commercial onslaught of television media especially was captivating. Advertising had taken psychology theory to new heights of intrusion into our daily lives, in the U.S. in particularly, but was poised to move forward to infect the rest of the world as it rebuilt from WWII. By the 1960s, the consequences of rampant technological innovation, the apparent disregard for what was happening to the natural world as pollution became commonplace, the hypnotizing attraction of consumerism and an ever-increasing desire for more stuff became a lifestyle in itself. Advertising had convinced us of our inherent imperfections and flaws and that only by trusting the markets could we find ourselves. Even after the 1962 Rachel Carson’s expose with ‘Silent Spring’ (as powerful as Upton Sinclairs ‘The Jungle” in 1906) and the counter-cultural movements such as the Hippy’s, the consumerism grip on people was unrelenting.
The economic imperative to keep growing exponentially was a given and businesses were on a roll in getting us to think only of ourselves, except where getting expensive gifts for others could generate revenue. The sad part of all of this is how it created isolated individualism and competition to outdo everyone else. The community disappeared as a real idea to finally mean just the area in which you lived. Then in the 1980’s the consumer model went into overdrive. It was no longer just a house and the many consumer toys like a small boat, a small beach/lake house, vacations to the Florida or the Bahama’s, it was now uber-luxury. The economic push was for everyone to emulate the uber-rich, even if they couldn’t afford it – “Hey, haven’t got the money, just charge it to the credit card. We love you being in debt!” We were told it was a wonderful life except the stress, anxiety, and uncertainty were driving so many to becoming basket cases. The fear of losing your job is an unstable economy was, and still is, one of the greatest fears – how will we pay of everything. The housing crash in the economic plunge of 2008 showed a lot of people just how fickle this wonderful life could be. The 5 minute-long satirical Youtube “Consumerism! The musical (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGaOQKJik-s)” outlines it nicely. In the MDCs and increasingly in the growing middle classes of the LDCs the stress of ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’ is driving people to look at other ways of living together. The younger generations know that something is wrong and are starting to look beyond the illusion that is consumerism. What is apparent is that we have a population of isolated individualistic to ones that focus on people more than the stuff they think can buy them love and friends.
I am not surprised that in the last decade so many people all over the planet have been opting out of the ‘Rat Race’ of consumerism. Instead of the individual that considers only themselves as important, imagine a collective thinking with collaboration. The key is that we have to let go this paradigm of only a century and understand just what it is that really makes us tick. Globally, most people see the environmental problems escalating out of control and an economic paradigm based on consumerism leading us down the path of perdition. I started out this last string of posts with the promise of different ways of living, so what is going on all over the planet that promises to save humanity. In case you want to get distracted by the technological promise of escaping to outer space a quick reality check. If we somehow did find a Earth – Planet B, it might be anew new fertile start but taking the current economic mentality would merely replicate the final consequences in the end. As Einstein is endless quoted (and for good reason), “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” This is why many bloggers besides myself keep emphasizing a new way of thinking and being! Consumerism didn’t just happen, it was planned and controlled by those with only the profit bottom line in mind and no thought of the future.
TBC….
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