The story of why you cannot buy happiness
Whether we want it or not, consumption seen as our principal role in the world. We are made to believe that we can make or break the economy with our purchasing habits. We are constantly told to keep consuming; it will make us happy, confident, accepted, liked, admired, envied. We will increase prosperity, contribute to economic growth, reduce unemployment.
But is all this true?
Whenever we look at news stories about the economy, the discussion is centred around people buying more or not buying enough. The population’s “consuming power” was a key concern for business leaders since the 1920s. Even today, world leaders encourage us to go out and spend our money to help the economy. Following 9/11 George Bush said that the best thing people can do for America is to not stop shopping. Rishi Sunak, UK’s prime minister had a similar message following the COVID pandemic.
If you look at the big picture then yes, consumption does help the economy because it factors into GDP, the measure that we use for defining economic growth. Whether GDP is the appropriate measure for such a purpose or if it is appropriate for our 21st century society and what alternatives exist is a separate discussion for another time.
All of this raises the question how to best embrace this status of being a consumer, use the power it gives us to make the changes we want to see in this world while ensuring we remain healthy, happy, functional members of our community and humankind.
The road that led us here, to the modern consumer, is paved with complex historical events. It is outside of the scope of this article to analyse those events. We will be touching on each of these only as it is necessary and relevant to the topic at hand.
It is important to acknowledge that hindsight can paint a different picture than the actual events witnessed and lived by people in those times. Yes, the possibility of consumption beyond mere subsistence is a good thing when the initial baseline is a person who was exiled from the lands where his ancestors lived and cramped into the unsanitary conditions of newly formed cities, forced to sell his labor to survive because he has nothing else left.
We are made to believe that transition from feudalism to capitalism and from limited amount of goods to mass-production was a natural and seamless process. That is incorrect. In the first 100 years of capitalism so many people died that cities needed a constant supply of residents moving in from the countryside to avoid collapse. And this is only the damage that was done at home, in Europe. If we consider the effects of colonialism, from start to the ongoing situation today, the human suffering cannot be quantified. This is reality but rather than judging people and actions from the past, we need to take an objective look at the events and learn from them, striving to make better decisions in the future.
A consumer is a person who buys goods and services for personal or household use. The term “consumption” is derived from the Latin word “consumere” which means using up of resources. But there is a similar term of “consummare” that means using up, wasting away, and finishing.
Consumerism from a personal point of view is the acquisition of goods and services beyond those that are necessary for survival, the idea that the happiness and well-being of an individual depend fundamentally on obtaining material possessions. Economically, consumerism is the idea that the increasing consumption of goods and services purchased in the market is always a desirable goal. Even more than that, it is a necessity to maintain economic growth. It is said that the more we consume, the better we live. While consumerism is present in several types of economic systems, it is most often associated with capitalism.
Consumer culture describes a lifestyle that is hyper-focused on spending money to buy material goods.
I am not yet born but my environment is already shaping me to be the perfect consumer. The algorithm figured out before my mother that she was pregnant and started bombarding her with ads and content suggestions. Gear, toys, parenting advice, cosmetics, formula and many other things a new parent is made to believe they need to have.
My parents are the typical 21st century, urban, middle-class folks who work hard, shower me with love, attention and all the toys they can afford. The first three to five years of my life are very fast paced and crucial for my brain’s development. I explore the surrounding world with curiosity. Everything is so new and exciting!
The television is on as a background noise for most of the day. And my parents spent a significant amount of time on their phones. However, before two years of age I cannot distinguish any sort of media from reality and cannot differentiate TV programming from commercials until I am five years old. The cartoons that I watch also transfer to my life in the form of toys, bed sheets, posters and themed clothes. Some my parents buy when they notice I love a show and some I ask them to buy for me.
We go shopping once or twice each week and I get lost among the shelves of shiny and colorful toys. At the cash register I notice a myriad of candy. Arranged exactly at my height it’s as if it was placed there specifically for me to pick up. I often plead with my parents to get some. It usually works as they don’t like to see me cry.
When I get older, I start receiving money as gift from my relatives on special occasions. I am very happy to receive that money because it gives me a chance to buy things that my parents don’t want to buy themselves. I want these because kids at school also have them. A portion of these purchases are gadgets and toys that I’ve seen during the commercial breaks while watching cartoons. Christmas is my favorite occasion. I usually have a very long wish list, but Santa usually brings me most items on it.
Preadolescence hits with a touch of insecurity. My parents finally allowed me to have a social media profile of my own. I use that to connect to my schoolmates and friends. I am much more attentive with my looks. Fashion and cosmetics play an increasing role in my life. I also have my own phone by now. This way I can constantly stay up to date with the latest trends. I love shopping and get excited every time I buy a new item. There are some wealthy kids at my school who always have the newest and nicest things. That makes me feel as if I am missing out and that I never have enough. I fear I might be excluded from certain social groups at school because of this. 
Adolescence hits and I work even harder to assert my individuality. This gets me into conflicts with my parents regularly. I feel that they don’t always get me. But every time that happens, I can lean on social media or rely on my friends online and offline. It is almost time for me to choose my career. It is very hard for a person of this age to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. But I try to think about what would bring me the most prestige and money. I don’t want to feel as if I’m missing out. I want to have big house, luxurious vacations, nice clothes, maybe a pretty car and all the newest gadgets available. This is what I see on reality TV that I am watching. And I believe that all these possessions are what I need to be happy.
As a young adult, I am looking forward to starting my life alone. Despite the struggles of not having enough money, I work hard all through college. I get an entry level job. I spend my money on typical things a person in their 20s does: clothes, shoes, technology, nights out partying. When I buy something new, it is really exciting the first few hours, but it fades fast and I’m out looking for the next thing. When I scroll on social media, I see all sorts of ads for objects that would totally make my life easier. It’s amazing how things that I didn’t even know I need show up in those ads.
I spent my adult life working a job with 40 hours a week on good weeks and 60 on bad ones. But I am slowly starting to put together the life I set out to build. I have a nice car, my phone is always the latest model, I have a luxurious wardrobe and collection watches. I go on vacation at least once a year and when I do, I splurge without much thought because I deserve it for working so hard. I don’t love my job, but it pays well. I can barely afford to buy a house but thankfully I can take out a mortgage, and that is how I buy a big house with a big garden in a good area. Credit cards make spending easy, so I use that whenever I want to buy something.
My house feels cluttered. Somehow, I still don’t have enough time for the things I want to do. I keep trying to purchase that one item that will magically solve all my problems, but it keeps escaping. I guess I just need to keep exploring and keep purchasing.
Years pass, I now work to pay off debt. Purchasing things is still a powerful dopamine hit, but at least I am now aware of it. I feel trapped. This is just how my world works. I am part of it and it’s not like if I stop buying things it will suddenly change.
Prior to the 18th century, there was no such thing as a consumer, but the pre-requisites were put in order long before that.
The main events that led us towards the consumer society we live in today are:
Our story takes us back to England, to the 1400s. During the revolutionary period between 1350 and 1500, the national income was shared more evenly, causing a drop in the profits enjoyed by the elites, compared to feudalism.
Peasants lived on estates owned by the King or the Lord of the Manor, but enjoyed “usufructuary” rights to graze stock, cut wood, draw water, and raise crops. The open fields system was influenced by the adoption of the caruca, a large, wheeled plough, which was heavy so needed a larger team of oxen and was hard to turn so long strips of land were ideal. This system was equitable, protected the resources of the group, made economies of scale, and made group resources available to small scale farmers. As a downside, individual farmers could not derail from the communal plan. The peasants got together twice a year to plan the harvest, they participated in the work proportionally to their share of land, sometimes organized yearly lotteries to decide the distribution of hay, talked about the state of the commons and potentially punished any individual that took more than his fair share.
All this started changing with the enclosure movement. The first enclosures started in 1235 and culminated with The Enclosure Act of 1700.
There are multiple reasons cited of being behind the enclosure movement, most of them having the increase of profits and productivity as a common link. For decades the justification for the enclosure movement was the fact that the communal lands were degraded by overuse caused by everyone putting his interest above everything else. While this may be true for the unmanaged commons, this was disproven to be true in most cases. This argument got into the environmental discussion, it was used between 1970-1990 to justify privatization schemes, used by the World Bank to enclose fisheries and impose trade quotas. It is still in use today, as a justification for modern land grabs, as Jason Hickel calls them. An example of that would be the displacement of villages in Africa to plant trees for the carbon-credits of Western companies.
The result of the enclosures was that peasants were chased off their lands, hundreds of villages were depopulated, many of them disappeared, millions of people were displaced, forced into cities where they had to work in factories and mines while depending on production for absolutely everything they used. This is the birth of the consumer.
In parallel with the enclosures on European soil, the process was unfolding similarly in the European colonies in the New World. Colonization was a response to the same crisis of elite disaccumulation caused by the peasant revolutions in Europe.
As Jason Hickel explains: “In 1525, the very year German nobles massacred 100,000 peasants, the Spanish king Carlos I awarded the kingdom’s highest honour to Hernán Cortés, the conquistador who slayed 100,000 Indigenous people as his army marched through Mexico and destroyed the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. The congruence of these events was not an accident, in the decades that inaugurated capitalism, enclosure and colonization were deployed as part of the same strategy.”
This was exactly what the Industrial Revolution and capitalism needed to pick up speed. Labor was abundantly available, abroad through slaves, and at home through the peasants forced into cities.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution all goods were produced in a system referred to as the ‘cottage industry’, all handmade and available in limited quantities. Since transportation was limited, most of the things people used were locally produced.
With the rise of city centers and factories, the cottage produced goods were replaced by mass-produced ones. This created some consumption because of the city dwellers not being able to produce anything of what they needed but also because an abundance of new and cheap goods allowed them to afford more. The consumerist society at the time was bolstered by the wealth accumulation of business owners who could afford to consume ever more.
Throughout the Industrial revolution people were divided by a large income gap. The 19th century was marked by the worker struggles as socialist values emerged to support the working class. These uprisings slowly eroded the seven-day week of 14-and 16-hours workdays that were deemed the regular schedule at the start of the Industrial Revolution. A strong middle class was born, thus increasing the consumption of goods and services further.
However, the influx of resources and additional land use in the Americas led to levels of overproduction that required the expansion towards other consumer markets. For this to happen, the local culture and industry of local artisans had to be destroyed. An example is the destruction of the fabrics industry in India, when their machinery was destroyed, and the hands of the weavers were crushed. Following European colonial interventions, India and China fell from over 20% in Global GDP to less than 3%, and South’s share in global manufacturing dropped from 77% in 1750 to 13% by 1900.
Even after colonization was over, the former colonizers made sure they retained the right to use resources and take advantage of the local markets. Throughout the 1900s they staged coups, put dictators in power, opposed developmentalist leaders and refused to allow developing countries to take the actions needed to become competitive on the global market. This type of intervention still occurs through structural adjustment programs and in general the leveraging of debt. Some examples are the IMF intervention in the financial crisis in Greece or the Chinese infrastructure investments in Africa.
In his book, Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Freire comments on the unconditional opening of borders that is so often pushed on countries through structural adjustment, asking if advanced countries would accept such opening of their borders in an earlier stage of capitalism in the way they ask from all others now. Fair question to ask, despite the answer being obviously no.
The 1920s mark the first wave of consumerism. Although business leaders and economists were concerned of the low “consumer power” and acknowledged a crisis of overproduction, the rise of marketing and the wide spread of radio has increased consumption. The one thing that all economists agreed upon was that consumption of goods must continue to increase. The father of marketing, Edward Bernays, argued that businesses cannot afford to wait for a need to arise in consumers. That needs must be created. Mass production needs high and continuous demand to be profitable.
Electrification was crucial for the consumption of new types of durable goods like vacuum cleaners, refrigerators. Car registration numbers also exploded between 1920 and 1929. Most of this consumption was predicated on debt. Following WW I the American banks loaned money to the German government, which used the loans to pay reparations to the French and British governments, which in turn used the money to pay war debts to American banks. At home, American Banks were lending people money with very lax conditions.
Overproduction did play a role in the upcoming Great Depression, together with the gold standard and high level of debt in the US. This was the start of the end for the first wave of consumerism. War time economy due to World War II extended this pause, and it took almost 20 years for mass consumption to resume its role in economic life.
Following the end of WW II, the population was sick of austerity measures, wartime rationing and ready to consume. The advent of television greatly magnified the potential impact of advertisers’ messages, exploiting image and symbol far more adeptly than print and radio had been able to do. Some people see the 1950s and 1960s as the golden age of consumerism. On one part people were persuaded to buy things they did not need, linking social status to possessions and consumption habits. On the other, manufacturers began to intentionally design inferior items, something that will later become known as “planned obsolescence”. In the technology era we are also victims of “functional obsolescence”, the impression that objects are obsolete and need updating before the actual mechanics of it fails.
When this second boom started the marketing has not yet caught up and the same tactic was used as in the 1920s. But the advertising campaigns have gotten ever more sophisticated since.
There is a so-called consumer awakening that is slowly occurring, partially born out of the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, accelerated by the vast amount of information available via the internet and a public outing of corporate wrongdoing. Customers are becoming more conscious, as in wanting to apply their moral standards to the products they spend their money on. By raising concerns, lobbying, protesting, and engaging with brands, they are now demanding higher standards, better checks, and accountability. Legislation changes and corporate practices have both been affected by the involvement of these consumers.
People often believe that capitalism was a natural progression from feudalism but that is far from reality. It was a miserable, bloody, and deadly hundred years, a transformation forced upon the masses.
Observations of hunter-gatherers revealed that, contrary to the image we have of them, they were not merely surviving, fighting to stay alive each day in an environment full of scarcity. To the contrary, they lived abundant lives, had few needs and thus used any additional time they had sleeping and socializing instead of focusing it to obtain overproduction. And most of the hunter-gatherers that were observed were already a selection of tribes that survived and lived on less fertile lands due to colonialism. Some even actively rejected agricultural practices because it would be too much work. As tempted as we may be to call them lazy, the reality is that controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays and many of us work today with this as a goal.
An official study of consumption and consumer society did not occur until the late 1980s and early 1990s. Prior to it becoming a separate field, it was included in economics. The term consumption still has a negative sentiment attached to it and consumerism has an overtone of waste. There is a powerful tradition of thought that inclines us to believe that even if consumption is not exactly “bad”, it can have nothing to do with that which is good, true, noble, or beautiful.
From Plato in ancient Greece to St. Augustine and the Christian fathers to writers in the Italian Renaissance, thinkers routinely condemned the pursuit of things as wicked and dangerous because it corrupted the human soul, destroyed republics, and overthrew the social order.
Karl Marx also viewed consumerism as morally derelict and, in some ways, sinful. Communist countries condemned the pleasure-seeking consumption, focusing more on the utilitarian aspects. Margaret Thatcher sought to demolish anti-consumerist Marxist attitudes as a matter of urgency. When, in March 1987, she toured Soviet Moscow in a Cossack-style fur hat, the Russians embraced her as an emissary of barcode freedoms and wealth.
Left-leaning elements of the Catholic Church continue to condemn “conspicuous consumption”, which is the displaying of ostentatious wealth to gain status and reputation.
To better understand the changes in individual perspectives of consumption, we need to differentiate between the traditional and modern consumers.
The traditional consumer is part of the pre-industrial society, one that has fixed needs and consumes the same products over and over as the need arises. The focus of this consumption is utilitarianism or satisfying of needs. Despite economists often suggesting that this was due to lack of resources to consume more, this consumption pattern seems to represent all the consumption that the needs dictated by traditional ways of life require.
The transition from the traditional to the modern consumer occurred once two pre-requisites were met, and their ideas institutionalized:
The modern consumer is part of an industrial and post-industrial society, is characterized
by a high turnover of goods and has endless wants rather than fixed needs. The focus of consumption is hedonism, or pleasure-seeking. The crucial difference is the type of “new” consumed: new and innovative products about which one cannot know if/how they’ll meet needs. One theory is that daydreaming is a contributing factor. Daydreaming, compared to fantasizing, is about real-life scenarios, which makes it easily comparable to the actual events once they occur. But reality can never compete with imagination and causes the real-life event to possibly be a disappointment. Besides the significant number of things a modern customer purchases, he/she also discards an equally large number of objects, which makes it clear that the purchase is often not about the object itself, but the anticipation of a feeling.
This change occurred gradually. In England by the end of the eighteenth century it had become generally unacceptable to wear second-hand clothing. It was around this time when the pursuit and display of opulence first extended beyond the very rich.
In other scenarios, consumption was a questioning of the status-quo. One example of this was tobacco companies hiring Edward Bernays to help extend their market. Prior to the 1920s it was taboo for women to smoke, which was an issue because they were half of the market. So Bernays came up with the “Torches of Freedom” campaign. He hired women to light up during a march down Fifth Avenue during Easter Parade in New York City as a protest gender inequality. Another example in this sense is fashion, that is often used to express oneself.
We are still far from an equal and equitable system for everyone on the planet, but the protests and sacrifices of previous generations make it so we now enjoy protections and rights people in the 1900s could only dream about.
Following urbanization and the increase in factory worker numbers in 1900, the first protests were related to working conditions and abuses like mislabeling and bad food safety. The rules and regulation of society were not set up for this new way of life that was developing. There were no labor laws or protections for employees. People worked long hours for low pay without days off, any protective gear or insurance in case they hurt themselves on the job. Child labour was normal, even small children needed to contribute to the family income. When it came to the products that were put on the market, there were no standards imposed on storage or labelling, causing multiple deaths and sickness.
Another wave of protests occurred in the 1930s when the fight was primarily against advertising. Specifically, the usage of misleading, uninformative ads, exploitation of insecurities. A failed attempt was made to implement product quality standards via the usage of a grading system.
The 1960s and ‘70s saw the rise of multiple groups that were addressing specialized topics. The main topics that were fought on were the regulation of corporate conduct in the consumer and environmental fields. For example, advertising for children was regulated in the U.S. during this period. However, many of these gains were lost at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s with the deregulation of the telecom industry. This deregulation legislation was meant to incentivize a business-friendly environment.
One group that was addressing multiple topics at once, was the hippie counterculture movement and its participants. They were opposed to everything that the previous decades were all about, such as wartime support, materialism, and work. Within the counterculture movement there were also other movements taking place, like the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements.
In the 1990s the anti-globalization movement was born. But it was not about nationalism or immigration, but about ongoing global policies that served investors and corporate interests instead of the general population.
Today, in 2024, we have several NGOs and citizen groups that focus on all sorts of topics locally and globally. Despite the general apathy and limited involvement in civic duties, whenever it matters, people do unite to protect their beliefs. Several movements and trends continue to oppose consumerism, focusing on sustainability, ethical living, and mindful consumption. Advocating for topics each one of us believes in was never easier.
The days of utilitarian purchasing are long behind us. Our purchase decisions allow us to express our personality, independence, moral values, passions, what group(s) we identify with. How we spend our money says so much about who we are and what our life experience has been like.
Many of the beliefs we have around money come from our parents and are strongly influenced by the invisible money dials they expose us to while growing up. This is a fascinating topic that is explored by Ramit Sethi in his weekly podcast.
There are multiple reasons why we all consume more than we need or should. It is not that people want to perpetuate harm, to themselves, the planet, and other people, through the way they live their lives, but instead we are talking about a combination of factors such as lack of knowledge, lack of possibilities, social pressure, and manipulation of wants and needs by marketing.
Pop culture taught us about the excitement of full makeovers, where an “ugly duckling” is transformed into a princess after buying tons of make-up, clothes, and accessories. It portrays shopping as a form of therapy. When you feel nervous, anxious, or sad, go on a shopping spree and the excitement of it will make you feel better. And when it comes to targeting children directly, we have themed clothes, bedsheets, toys, snacks and even cereal that portrays some character from their favorite show.
We buy because everyone around us does. And not having the latest in whatever trends your peer group is invested in would make you stand out in ways that you might not want to. In the business world, especially if you have achieved a higher status, you are expected to look a certain way, have the car, the gadgets and so on.
The less fortunate of us buy low quality products because they lack the money to buy a more expensive but more durable item. Even though they know it will brake soon, they have no option but to repurchase it once it does. Some don’t even have choices on what to buy because of the area they live in.
We are sometimes forced to buy because a new electronic device is often cheaper than repairing the old one. That makes no sense!
Our relationship with discomfort and unease, a topic that is touched on by many authors, like Yuval Noah Harari, Cal Newport, David Goggins, Mark Manson, Gad Saad just to name a few, has a strong impact on all aspects of our lives. We deny the subjectiveness of happiness, we fail to recognize that it is not an equation that we need to solve using external sources. We run from discomfort and thus fail to use it in our advantage. Most of us don’t stop, think, accept discomfort, savour it and learn from it but instead throw money at the next product or service that is said to solve “the problem”.
All these reasons lead into the knowledge piece. This is just how life and our society work. Many of us don’t know about the full lifecycle of things. Unless covered in mainstream media, most people will never consider what is behind the curtains. My mother once told me about a kitchen knife to use it while it cuts well and then just throw it out because they are so cheap, they will just buy me another one.
We need to get to a low place before we realize that we are on autopilot, executing the code that society passed down. This is when the need to get to know ourselves, listen to our inner voice and respect our intuition arises and we start questioning the outdated and rigid societal norms we adhered to.
Tim Ferris told an interesting story in one of his podcasts about his travels to Africa. He remarked how people in Africa are always in a good mood, even happy but he arrived at a village where that was not at all the case. Upon asking his guide why that was, the guide said that it’s because they recently got satellite television and they were now watch the Kardashians and see what they are missing out on.
When it comes to us, as individuals, television and social media present a shiny image of a happy consumer showing off their best life with all the cool gadgets they own while studies clearly show that having more options is not necessarily good thing. It causes overwhelm, decision fatigue, anxiety and even depression.
Overconsumption creates a sense of entitlement. Children that grow up being consumed by consumption are more likely than others to feel anxious or depressed. They grow into adults that simply can’t be without the latest “toy”. It was even shown that negative feelings about self and family go up with the level of consumerism.
This contributes to Western nations having high rates of mental illness. We drift further away from our community because we work long hours for money and status. We are then too tired to regulate ourselves and end up spending that money on stuff we don’t need but believe will make happy, demonstrate said status or make our life easier. When neither happens, we discard those things and try again.
People are encouraged to be dumbed-down adults, impulsive childlike consumers because this makes them the perfect clientele to have. This is great for business and has the added benefit of eroding people’s civic duties, making them spectators of their nation’s political developments rather than participants.
Studies show that while there is a threshold of income that increases happiness, once that was exceeded, more money does not make us happier. But quite the opposite, wealth decreases empathy, further removing us from our community and other humans living on this planet.
Influencers and ads bombarding us all the time, exploiting our insecurities, make it hard to break out of the consumption loop. And if consumerism is a value transferred within the family, it becomes a way of being, making it even harder.
As Western culture and consumption patterns have moved to lower income countries, there is a visible decline in population health and an increase in litter at every curb in cities and around them. The negative mental health consequences are slowly creeping in. The real problem here is the lack of infrastructure. Starting with recycling, healthcare, and education. Because of this, the average person will be exposed to the worst impacts of this new lifestyle.
Call it the “rat race”, “hedonic treadmill” or plain and simple, “consumer culture”, there is a way out. You can break free yourself and make a difference for others.
When it comes to the wellbeing of the planet we live on, the consensus is that, to provide a decent standard of living to all people on the planet, countries that are currently on income levels 1 and 2 need to industrialize and increase consumption. It is not hard to imagine how applying the consumer habits of current rich countries as they are today to the increasing populations in Africa and Asia will be a disaster for the planet. But the conclusion here should not be that they cannot and should not be allowed to live like us, but rather that we cannot continue living like us.
These nations are walking the same path as rich countries did, making the same sacrifices instead of taking the good and mitigating the bad. For example, Africa is holding back greenwashing legislation because it needs the foreign investment that would otherwise go elsewhere. Or Brazil is cutting down the rainforest for the income that comes from timber, minerals, oil and farming (both crop and cattle). In the large scheme of things destruction of nature has global consequences, not just an effect on the future generations in those places.
Western Europe has only a small portion of natural and ancient forests left. Most fauna, especially large animals as bears, lynx and wolves no longer exist in lots of places. As we learned from the wolves returned to Yellowstone National Parc, these animals are important to the ecosystem in ways we never realized. We, Europeans are a million miles from perfect when it comes to mitigating human-animal conflicts and preserving habitats. We should clearly do better ourselves.
To be clear, I am not saying that they should stop any development but rather that they should develop with nature in mind, and we are under the obligation to help them. Who is we? Countries on income levels 1 and 2, especially countries that had former colonies in many of these areas.
This cannot happen if the single role of corporations is to produce returns for their shareholders. Shareholder activism is on the rise, but corporations are fighting back with lawsuits.
This cannot happen if we don’t choose the leaders to support foreign policies we align with. Globally nationalism and extremism are on the rise. Candidates often leverage people’s fears and promote negative stereotypes such as the idea of halting overproduction and overconsumption as an austerity measure, an attack on personal freedom despite this being far from the truth. Studies show that we can reduce consumption by 60%, thus allowing all humans on the planet to live at 1960 Swiss level of living.
This certainly cannot happen if we refuse to acknowledge that poverty is all our problem. Eliminating poverty must be the first step towards solving any other problem we might face.
Conscious consumption is an umbrella term that simply means engaging in the economy with more awareness of how your consumption impacts society at large.
We are impacting the planet and our environment just because we were born, and we are living. Very few people are completely self-sufficient and even those have an impact as they grow their food and satisfy their utilitarian needs. It’s not all or nothing and it’s always more impactful to have lots of people do something imperfectly rather than just a few do it perfectly.
We can and should consider our consumption choices. Having clearly defined sustainability priorities will make navigating purchases easier. Products might not satisfy all our requirements and then a prioritization comes in handy. For example, local produce that is wrapped in plastic versus imported one that is not.
To avoid impulse buying make sure you have a list of things you need/want to buy and when grocery shopping, never go on an empty stomach. Do not deviate from that list.
The most important thing before making a purchase is to ask yourself if you really need that specific item. Maybe you already have something similar that fits the purpose or you can do well without. If you do need the item, is there any way you can either borrow it or buy it second hand?
When choosing an item to purchase make sure you consider the entire lifecycle of the product. A few things that are easy to consider without a lot of research are:
While making a complete and accurate life cycle assessment (LCA) is done by scientist and specialists, if you want to explore in more detail than the above, you can find a more exhaustible list in the PDF in the Downloadable section below.
Find a few companies that you like and trust rather than evaluating products separately each time you want to make a purchase. There are multiple websites that can help you with guidance and aggregated information on companies. Some examples are:
Be aware of what scientists termed licensing, that is when a consumer feels that an initial ethical action confers permission to behave less virtuously in the future. Simply knowing about our inbuilt systems can help us avoid their effects.
Time, convenience and overwhelm are big action stoppers when it comes to taking eco-action. This is why creating systems, rules and routines are so valuable for everything from habit building to finances. By investing the time to think it through and write it down, you can then easily navigate purchasing and be certain that you minimized the incidence of post-purchase regrets. Come back to these rules and systems periodically because both you and your circumstances will change over time.
To reset your consumer mentality try doing a no-buy or low-buy month/season/year. If you are not ready to commit to a no-buy period, you can ease in with low-buy. I am currently doing a low-buy year for 2024. The mechanics is simple: I took the month of December 2023 to set up the rules. It doesn’t have to take that long but make sure that you are starting your period with rules set in place. Changing the rules during the low-buy period defies the purpose. I listed out my rules, restrictions and allowed list. You can find my 2024 Low-Buy plan as a downloadable pdf in the next section below.
If you are part of a couple, share bank accounts with your partner. Couples with shared bank accounts are more likely to make utilitarian purchases than hedonic ones, in contrast with couples who keep separate bank accounts.
Buy experiences instead of stuff. Experiential consumption will generally make you feel happier, it triggers a greater sense of gratitude, can make you more generous and strengthens social ties when you talk about your experiences with other people. However, beware that people are more willing to go into debt for experiential purchases because these are time dependent.
Have a hobby that is completely outside of capitalism and consumption independent. Explore nature, garden, volunteer, invest in yourself and your wellbeing through yoga, meditation, learning a language just to name a few.
Many times, living ‘eco-friendly lifestyle’ is seen as a life of austerity and sacrifice, which is nothing more than a negative stereotype. There are numerous trends, movements and groups that oppose consumerism. Be open minded and explore a few of them. You might find one your like. Here are some notable ones:
These trends reflect a growing awareness of the environmental and social impacts of consumerism and a shift towards more sustainable and mindful ways of living. And they have nothing to do with austerity.
Talk about it! One of my friends asked everyone around the table on a night out what purchases we made recently that changed our lives. That had me realize that for some time now I refused to make any purchases if they are not in themselves a life changer. Don’t be afraid to talk about consumption but do so recognizing the underlying needs each person is trying to satisfy. Don’t blame as nobody is proactively trying to do harm. Also, experiments have shown that activating moderate amounts of guilt, sadness, or fear is more effective than trying to elicit a strong reaction. The latter might cause anger, upset or irritability and shut down the conversation you are having. Be aware that once the discussion reaches the systemic issues we are facing, that is usually a conversation stopper. It doesn’t have to be, and guiding the conversation to real solutions might help broaden the other person’s world view. Focusing on local impacts and reference points are particularly powerful to bring your points through. Be balanced by addressing the bad and the good. There are plenty of good people doing good things out there, they are just difficult to see because of the news cycle’s focus on the sensational. Not to blame the media, but they are just trying to remain in business, and exploiting our natural negativity bias is what makes this happen.
Individual action is needed to change the societal level. Following individual actions, you can and should harness the tools you have available to make a systemic change. You can sign petitions, vote for people that stand for the same principles as you do, participate in protests, civil groups, advocate and educate whenever possible.