Since the 1950s, there has been a running debate within academic circles regarding the ethics and morality of consumer culture. While that debate has been primarily held by sociologists, one can see how there are clear psychological implications involved in the conversation. Most of us spend considerable time engaged in the world of consumption, after all, with our thoughts and behaviors centered around how we choose to spend our money in the marketplace.
Critical Views of Consumerism
From the late 19th century on, one side of this debate has argued that consuming has been a distinguishing characteristic of Western society, and not in a positive sense. Marketers have pressured us to buy things allegedly to improve our standard of living and dangle the carrot of upward mobility, critics of consumerism have argued, the net effect being that our respective personal identities have been principally defined through the shallow attributes of acquisition and materialism.
This critical interpretation of consumer culture has gone further by its advocates positing that limitless, market-driven consumption goes far beyond the defining of human beings as, more than anything else, purchasers of goods and services. Our throwaway society will at some point turn the planet into a global garbage dump, we’re told, making consumerism not just existentially bankrupt but ultimately environmentally unsustainable.
Positive Views of Consumerism
Others, however, have seen things quite differently. People have found true meaning in being consumers, this side has proposed, making us not all puppets being manipulated by capitalists. Consumption has served as a vehicle by which individuals have essentially climbed up Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, this argument goes, therefore helping people evolve as human beings. We look to the world of goods and services to carve out our personal identities in a complex society, pro-consumers have contested, with who we are principally defined by how we construct our unique selves through the things and experiences that are for sale.
Not surprisingly, business leaders have been quick to defend their interests against anticonsumerist criticism, claiming that a private enterprise system is an outgrowth of the democratic principle of individual choice. Our abundance and material achievements are a blessing of which to be proud, they’ve argued, and stand in sharp contrast to the government-dictated controls of Communists. Had it not been for our consumerist ethos, they’ve pointed out, we wouldn’t be turning on electric lights, driving cars, flying in jets, talking on telephones, or taking the wonder drugs that have saved lives.
Are we, more than anything else, consumers? And, if so, is that a bad or a good thing?
Whichever side of this debate one supports, it’s important to recognize that consumerism is one of the relatively few spheres of life that we all have in common, making it in some sense a uniting force that bridges our many constructed social divisions. (Unless one lives totally off the grid, every citizen is a consumer.) It is true that, for better or worse, we’ve devoted much effort to forging our own style of consumption—a private endeavor—but the act itself is essentially the same and, thus, a public one. What we buy and how much we spend varies greatly, in other words, but consuming has unarguably served as a shared experience to which we all can somehow relate.
Not Mutually Exclusive
The long-standing debate over consumerism illustrates how we are psychically capable of accommodating seemingly oppositional viewpoints, both as a society and as individuals. We can agree with critics’ entirely justifiable claims that unchecked consumption is superficial, ethically questionable, and ultimately unsustainable while at the same time recognizing that consuming has been instrumental in defining our personalities. Such a view suggests that the two sides of the debate are not mutually exclusive—for example, we can recognize the philosophical flaws in being, first and foremost, consumers, but also wish we had more money so we could spend more money.
It’s clear that our feelings about consumerism are complex, a prime example of humans’ rather strange capacity to juggle seemingly paradoxical and contradictory positions on a particular issue. It’s fair to say we have a love-hate relationship with consuming, disparaging its frivolity and consequences while relishing the many pleasures to be found within it.
