So the snow is costing the retail sector £110m per day, threatening our fragile economic recovery-bad news the media shouts, really? Is it really bad news? (Note: this blog was written in January!!)
Shouldn't we be asking a different question?....
The stuff we haven't bought because of the snow can't be stuff we need. So the overall impact is that we have more money in the bank or less credit card debt, and less stuff that we don’t need. And that is portrayed as a bad thing!!
No no no David! You miss the point; we need to spend money to get the economy going again.
Do we really? To what end? We spend money we don't have, to buy things we don't need to make us feel better about our lives so we feel more confident, so we buy yet more stuff we don’t need.
And all this spending, what does it give us? A misguided sense of what is important, of what we should be doing with our lives. And absolutely no increase in well-being or happiness, in fact there are strong arguments to the contrary. The constant pursuit of material wealth and sensory pleasures will never satisfy us, yet the more we get the more we want, we are addicted. Like all addictions it will be an endless unsatiated pursuit.
We have not only blurred the distinction between need and want, we have totally merged them. This has led to an unprecented level of consumption and more significantly a total confusion over what we really need to be happy and fulfilled.
Buying stuff we don’t need will not make us happy.
We do it because we are constantly told it will, the billions of pounds spent on advertising each year, tell us so, and we believe it.
What would happen if for just one day we didn’t spend anything on stuff we don’t need? For a start we would be £110m better off. If we did if for a whole week!!
No one suffered as a result of not spending because of the snow.
By applying more discipline to our spending we can wean ourselves off the illusion that we need to spend to be happy. As we do this a whole new world of opportunities will appear to us, spending more time with our family and friends, human fellowship, exploring the countryside, music, film, theatre sport… These truly valuable things get squeezed out of our lives because we are so busy… busy doing what? Have a look at any of the Shopping Malls on a Saturday!!
I am convinced that if we were to make a conscious effort to spend less, or at least critically examine our reasons for spending we could break this cycle and lift the blinkers from our eyes and consequently our souls.
I am not arguing that buying stuff is, per se a bad thing. The bad thing is our addiction, individually and collectively.
That our credit cards, and so the retailers control us, is a bad thing. That we have ceded this control without knowing is a bad thing. Nor I am proposing some sort of puritanical approach to life where self-sacrifice is a virtue.
I am asking us to think, think about where the control resides, do you control your spending? Or do your emotions and desires which have been manipulated by years of extremely sophisticated psychological advertising and marketing control your spending?
When you see something you want to buy, pay attention to what happens, physically and emotionally. Do you engage in an internal conversation seeking to justify the purchase? What does that sound like? What is the source of the justification? How often is the argument anchored in our emotions, it will make me feel better, little Jonny will love it, I deserve a treat? I can’t wait to see her face when I give it to her.
Is it stressful to walk away without the purchase? Pay attention to how you feel?
For those who have smoked and given up this is familiar. The addiction is complex, but ultimately we smoked because we enjoyed it, it was pleasurable in the moment we felt better for doing it, and worse for not doing it.
We feel better in the moment for succumbing to the desire to purchase, we get a sensory reward, just like a cigarette, we enjoy the ritual of taking it home sharing it wearing it, playing with, driving it………..
Nothing wrong with that I hear you say. I agree, nothing wrong with that at all. In the same way as there is nothing wrong with smoking!! In fact at least with smoking we now all know it kills us, so there is no lie, no fraud. No one is saying “smoking is good for us, it will make us happy”. Not even smokers argue that it makes them happy, it is enjoyable and to give up is too hard.
So how different is our rampant consumerism? Well it may not give us lung cancer but it can kill us in other ways. It destroys our capacity to explore other ways to enjoy our time. The thrill afforded to us by shopping is an instant, no doubt chemical (dopamine) high, it provides instant gratification, again much like smoking. But does it do much more than that? All it does is leave us wanting more of the same thing. And pulls us back to the same chemically induced high again and again. In doing so pulls us away from those things that are known to nourish the soul,
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I really don't think you need to worry need vs want and the ills of our rampant consumerism. We are well on the way to fixing this - collectively.
ReplyDeleteThe fix is this. Just buy loads of stuff. Buy stuff, and when a slighter better version is introduced (like a month later) buy that newer version. Chuck the "obsolete" one away. Even better, buy stuff and never even use it.
Clearly there is so much new stuff to buy and financing this could be a problem. Just buy it on credit. If necessary keep mortgaging your house to do so - after all, your house will always go up in value.
And if your house stops increasing in value and when you cannot take on any more debt, but you still want more stuff, it is not a problem. The govt will step in and help. Keep interest rates low, bail out businesses that are not commercially viable, and take on a pile of debt in lieu of the consumer.
Unfortunately we do not make stuff anymore (it gets in the way of watching reality tv) so the stuff we buy is generally imported.
So we all borrow money, effectively from the Chinese, to buy stuff we don't need, also from the Chinese.
Then one of two things happens.
Either this carries on for ever, we keep increasing our debt to buy stuff we don't need and doesn't make us happy and our lenders are cool with the fact that there is zero prospect that they will ever get repaid.
Or, our lenders find other, more productive uses for their cash. They stop lending. We are not able to buy any more stuff.
We are collectively well on the way to the second option. We just don't know how long it will take to get there.
Until we make stuff cheaper or better than our competitors this will not reverse. Cheaper would require our standard of living to compete with workers in China etc. Better would require us to do something with our lives other than buying stuff we don't need and watching reality tv.
So I am not too worried that we will carry on buying stuff we don't need. It is more likely that we are not going to be able to afford to buy stuff we do actually need.
We might actually be happier then.