Some days, I don't enjoy being in my own house. I walk in the door, and instead of seeing a haven, I see
projects: dishes, laundry, mail to sort, walls I was going to paint, carpet I was going to have cleaned, broken things I'd meant to fix. Everywhere I look, there's some
thing that needs to be done.
My "stuff" makes claims on me daily. And my stuff, and your stuff, is in danger of destroying the world as we know it. Does that sound melodramatic? Follow me after the jump for a view of the real impact "stuff" has on us--both personally and globally.
Consumerism affects every aspect of our lives, from how happy we are on a day to day basis to how long we will be able to sustain our environment and our planet.
We all complain about clutter. Whole new TV shows have sprung up to help people de-clutter their homes and lives, while we watch in both horror at how badly some folks have let their stuff pile up and in recognition of easily that could be us. George Carlin even has a famous comedy routine about "stuff":
That's all your house is-a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it, and when you leave your house, you've got to lock it up. You wouldn't want to somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. That's what your house is-a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. Sometimes you've got to move-got to get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore." George Carlin, A Place for My Stuff 1981
The truth is, everything we buy has an impact that is both global and personal. Look around you right now. Find some random object. Pick it up. For me right now, it's a silly plastic toy watch one of my kids got from a children's meal at Sbarro in the mall's food court. It says "Made in China." I wonder how many hands in some Chinese factory touched this thing, how much raw material went into its production, and how much fuel was expended to get it to our Raleigh store. Now that's it here in my house, and my child has so helpfully abandoned it next to the computer, this watch, this thing is creating a claim on me: I must use it, store it, or trash it.
I have no use for it. My child already has another watch, too. I have too much junk in the house already. And trashing it adds to a separate but related problem. And my house is full of "stuff" like this--the flotsam and jetsam of life in 2005.
Is my stuff making me happy? Even most little kids can at least mouth the thought that money, and by extension, the things you buy with money, won't make you happy. Even places like Money Magazine have readers who worry about how there seems to be little connection between earning, spending, and happiness:
The Armchair Millionaire
Dear Armchair Millionaire: I earn twice as much now as I did five years ago, yet it still isn't enough to buy all the things I really need. In fact, I'm working harder than ever but slipping further behind. I feel like I'm trapped in a continuous earn-and-spend cycle. What can I do? -- Hannah, LA
Since 1985, Marc Mirngoff, a professor at the Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy, has published an "Index of Social Health." Combining 16 indicators -- including infant mortality, high school graduation, and homicide rates -- the index is a holistic overview of how well the country is doing with respect to its population's quality of life. Perhaps not surprising to readers on this site, as the GDP has increased, the social health of the country has gone down--dramatically. Just think about it: divorce, for example, which can be emotionally devastating, usually creates two households--two rent payments, two sets of living room furniture, two sets of kitchen dishes, where before there were one. Divorce is good for the economy.
After 9/11, we were told to go shopping.
Sut Jhally from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has an explanation:
Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse*
©Sut Jhally
Department of Communication
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003
In this article I wish to make a simple claim: 20th century advertising is the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its cumulative cultural effects, unless quickly checked, will be responsible for destroying the world as we know it. As it achieves this it will be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of non-western peoples and will prevent the peoples of the world from achieving true happiness. Simply stated, our survival as a species is dependent upon minimizing the threat from advertising and the commercial culture that has spawned it. I am stating my claims boldly at the outset so there can be no doubt as to what is at stake in our debates about the media and culture <snip>
Objects are everywhere in capitalism. In this sense, capitalism is truly a revolutionary society, dramatically altering the very landscape of social life, in a way no other form of social organization had been able to achieve in such a short period of time.
<snip> Almost the entire media system (television and print) has been developed as a delivery system for marketers - its prime function is to produce audiences for sale to advertisers. <snip>
Once produced, commodities must go through the circuit of distribution, exchange and consumption, so that profit can be returned to the owners of capital and value can be "realized" again in a money form. If the circuit is not completed the system would collapse into stagnation and depression. Capitalism therefore has to ensure the sale of commodities on pain of death. <snip> So central is consumption to its survival and growth that at the end of the 19th century industrial capitalism invented a unique new institution - the advertising industry - to ensure that the "immense accumulation of commodities" are converted back into a money form <snip>
More thought, effort, creativity, time, and attention to detail has gone into the selling of the immense collection of commodities than any other campaign in human history to change public consciousness. One indication of this is simple the amount of money that has been exponentially expended on this effort. Today, in the United States alone, over $175 billion a year is spent to sell us things. This concentration of effort is unprecedented.
(emphasis mine.)
Knowing how advertising works is one way to help combat the issue of "stuff" and the devastating effect it can have. In an earlier diary, I advocated for the need to increase Media Literacy Media Literacy 101 and explained something of the way that advertising works on our national psyche.
A basic function of advertising is to create a need. Without this perceived need, you won't take the action step of buying something. So our advertising culture keeps us in a constant state of dissatisfaction--we're never good enough, never pretty enough, never successful enough, unless we buy their product. Once you have swallowed the bait, though, the industry must get you to buy again, and again. It's a vicious cycle, where what you have seems like never enough, and so much valuable time, energy and resources get spent on caring for all that "stuff."
At the end of the day, I want my husband, my children, my school and my community to have the largest claim on my time and emotional energy, not my stuff.
So how do I get there? First, by recognizing this disease of Affluenza and secondly, by voluntarily working to cut our family's consumption. I'm reading up on Voluntary Simplicity , and trying to educate my kids about the power of ads and the false glitter of all those things in the mall.
It's not easy. When we moved from Boston to Raleigh, one of the best decisions we made was to buy a house based only on one income, even though both my husband and I were working. We have a lovely home, 2,000 square feet, perfectly adequate for our family's needs, but modest by community standards. I know I'm giving my children so much more when I can take our extra income and put it into savings, college plans, and long-term goals than if I gave them bigger bedrooms, but I still have to fight my own inner green-monster voice every time I visit friends who live in the local McMansions.
So what about you? What struggles and stresses do you have with "stuff"? How do you see advertising and consumerism affecting the planet? Can Capitalism and happiness co- exist?
Or are we stuck with this: "We're filling our lives with things, and then telling pollsters how empty we feel" (From the PBS video, Affluenza)