The High Price of Materialism

Alongside 'Psychology and Consumer Culture' and his work on Common Cause, Tim Kasser's 2002 book The High Price of Materialism has had a powerful impact on the sustainability movement. The Center for a new American dream has just released this five minute summary of Kasser's work; it is a great starting point for getting people interested in this most important debate:

Which Amazon do we most value?

The profits of Amazon.com have fallen this year, but this is only because they are making huge investments in their infrastructure, so as a business they can continue to grow and grow. Although their profits have fallen, they are still pretty huge; they made £116m last year.

"Low prices, expanding selection, fast delivery and innovation are driving the fastest growth we've seen in over a decade," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive.

So, while one Amazon grows and expands, that other Amazon continues to catastrophically shrink and disintegrate. You may have received a nudge to sign an Avaaz petition today. The petition is calling on the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to veto changes to forest protection laws; have you signed it?

At the time of writing, 976,000 people have signed the petition to save the Amazon rainforests, while Amazon.com makes over 2 million sales every day.

What does this parable say about what we have come to value most in the world? Is it stuff, or the stuff of life?

If not a consumer economy then what?

I’ve had a busy week. On Tuesday (the 18th) I was the speaker at Café Scientifique in Cheltenham where I managed to instigate a lively debate around the relationships between sustainability, consumerism and well being. It was so encouraging to hear so many people grappling with the question of ‘what do we need for a ‘well’ life?’ I posed the question ‘what lies beyond a consumer economy?’ I don’t know the answer to that one, I’m not sure any one does, but if you think about sustainability for long enough it is the one question you will always reach, as painful as it is for some, it is hard to ignore. My only hope is the more people we can get to the point where they understand why we have to ask that question, the more chance we will get of finding an answer to it. From Cheltenham I headed to Bath to give a presentation to the Centre for Research in Environmental Education (CREE) at the University of Bath. That was the presentation that I have been preparing to give since I started my PhD studies. I was, I think, received well and ended up by questioning and suggesting how EfS can contribute to the asking and answering of the same big question: ‘If not a consumer economy then what?’

This ‘big’ question is in focus now more than ever. As I travelled round, staying with friends, conversing with acquaintances and keeping an eye on the papers, the inescapable reality of redundancies, the economic downturn and the ‘end of shopping’ was everywhere I went. I have friends worrying about how they are going to tell colleagues that they need to clear their desks as well as friends who are suffering huge anxieties over how long it is until they get called into the bosses’ office for some bad news. The most obvious impact of the downturn (and driver of unemployment) is the drop off in the great British leisure activity of shopping; I wonder what people are doing for fun instead? Maybe they are finding other things to do with their time, something, dare I say it, less glamorous and shiny but ultimately more fulfilling perhaps? Or, maybe they are just wandering aimslessly, window shopping wistfully?

The economic downturn and the exodus from the high street seems to prove that shopping is a luxury activity, something indulged in during good times. Individuals can, it seems, live without it, but can society? Given the obvious links between shopping and employment, I wonder if there is a guilt attached to shopping less? Do people feel a duty to shop, is it in fact selfish not to shop? I don’t feel too guilty about it, it is good for me to see through the material wealth = happiness myth, but then again I don’t like seeing my friends losing their jobs. It might be painful in the short term but in the long term, this downturn could be the opportunity we need to re-think our cultural foundations. Maybe we can re-build our economy around something else, something more stable, something less tied up in a spurious belief that identity, happiness, fulfilment, love, friendship and respect can and should be bought and sold in the marketplace. Should we be trying to work out how to get people back to their consumerist ways (for example by implementing emergency VAT cuts) or should we be trying to find a more sustainable way of running the economy. But, if not a consumer economy then what?!

Cathedral of Consumerism

Tomorrow morning Westfield London shopping mall opens in Shepard's Bush... on joy of joys!

India Knight has been losing her religion in the aisles of this new cathedral of consumerism she wrote about it a couple of weeks back, read it here:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article4925038.ece?Submitted=true

Here is my favourite quote from that article:

Feeling down? Reinvent yourself through clothing and accessories. Feeling up? Buy techy gadgets to mark the occasion. Feel there’s a weird sort of hole at the centre of your being? Fill it with goods and the unpleasant feeling will be gone for, ooh, a week or so, which is fine because then it’ll be the weekend again and time for further communion. And so on.

Two recent reads: The Tipping Point and Living it Up

The Tipping Point is by Malcolm Gladwell (2000), I've just finished reading it. It talks about Social epidemics, how they happen and what you need to make one happen. The book is really just a series of case studies, it starts with 'Hush Puppy' shoes, talks about Paul Revere's Ride and the American Revolution. He talks about Sesame Street, Broken Glass syndrome and teenage smoking. Each of the case studies are interesting in their own right and no doubt this book has helped shape the marketing strategies of many marketing men! I concluded that if you want to successfully start a social epidemic you need to create rapid word of mouth. The book also highlights the huge difficulties faced by those trying to get people to consume less. As businesses gain better understandings of how to market and sell their products thanks to the findings of psychologists and books like Gladwell's, highly consumerist social epidemics are going to appear over and over again! However, the environmental and voluntary simplicity movement could learn a lot from this book.

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'Living in Up, America's Love Affair with Luxury' is written by James Twitchell (2002) an English Lecturer from the University of Florida. I bought it in Oxfam in Guildford a couple of months ago. It explores the evolution of the luxury phenomenon and how the marketing of luxury products now lies at the heart of consumerism. Twitchell observes life in the Luxury shopping streets and malls of New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. While the book derides the hollowness of conspicuous consumption he seems to argue throughout that the alternatives are worse. The following quote exemplifies this: 'Trusting pocket books over prayer books may make the world safer and even more humane. After all, the only things that separate us are... things. And you can buy things. You can't buy ancestry, religious affiliation, or the number of vowels in your name. Consuming status at the cash register is vulgar, to be sure, but the alternatives have often been worse.' The consumption of status symbols is undoubtedly democratic. Status, the respect of others and so on does not have to come through status symbols, in fact conspicuous consumption can often have the opposite effect!