We are sold the whole world, and it salves us not
Scroll through Instagram, open any magazine, watch any show and an idealised version of woman or manhood is presented ala carte. We are bombarded with airbrushed physiques, then sold products to help us achieve this society ordained perfection. If that fails, there are always the diet pills, hair extensions, fat busters, shredder work outs and expensive clothes that will edge us closer to the ideal. This much is life in the 21st Century, that no matter what you do there is always a product that will make you better. Failing that, here’s another product to ease your existential pain. Better yet, here are all the products that may dull your pain for an hour or two. Purchasing goods and experiences are sold as panaceas for our woes and inner turmoil, yet in this yearning for perfect we invariably end up caught in a maze that is next to impossible to break out from.
My vice, my personal addiction, is buying things. I get a buzz, a shot of endorphin from the process, from the accumulation of possessions. Every time I have a large amount of money I feel that frisson of anticipation, of knowing that I can walk into any shop or surf any website and purchase whatever I fancy. I am not overly compulsive, generally I plot and plan, but the end is the same result. Bags of goods, hours of unpacking and putting away, and then slowly the buzz fades. It is something I have to fight with every ounce of my being at times, not to spend away a depressive episode. It is hard to not see things and need them. I mean want in that deep seated must have it sense.
What compounds this is that I have nearly two decades of sales and marketing training, I understand that all the gloss and shine, all the sales talk and patter is designed to part us with our money. They sell a need, for they know that if we need something we generally will go above and beyond to get it, without considering the implications of having that particular thing. We are conditioned to see something and objectify it, to see it as the next step to perfection, that this object will make us better people. Sex sells because we are attuned to seeing success as young, lithe bodies. Every product has its own image based on our psychology, understanding our sub-conscious buttons and pressing every single one of them.
Selling something is not overly hard once you work through a person’s objections and see that they actually need that thing in their lives. Sometimes this process is relatively harmless, and we get something that is useful, but often it tips us into spending more than we intended, more than we should. Pressure selling, up-selling, promising the worlds are all sales tactics used on us to get us to buy more to fill the void in our lives. Then you are sold another panacea when that proves empty; come to Church, watch sports, play games, volunteer. A circle of consumption, guilt, penance, and redemption.
The cynic would say that is just life, that is how the capitalistic world works. That our whole lives are moulded from cradle to grave to consume and be part of the sales process. Our psychology depends on us being part of a community, and in the 21st Century that community is rock steady on consumption, almost keeping up with the virtual Jones. Our quest for the perfect life is sold to us because it keeps the basic economy going; that Pret sandwich, those Nike trainers, oh look, the latest iPhone. It is a rat race in which there is no winning post. The only way to break free is to consume less, to tune out of the media, and switch off social media; however, in the process we loose connections to those who matter to us, who sit within the same commercial ecosystem we do.
If the answer is to consume less then we need to ask what that looks like. Less back breaking low end jobs in garment factories, fewer sales positions, a smaller high street, Amazon being taken down a peg or two. It means rethinking the whole economy from top to bottom. Thinking about where the money will come from to support re-skilling, retraining, and possibly those who will never work because their age, skills, disabilities, or personal home commitments keep them out of the labour market. In a world where our value is our work, and our labour affords us consumption, how do we decouple self-worth from consumption?
Personally, I have tried to cut down on how much I physically buy. I have too much stuff, and while I do prune and donate to charity, it still feels like I have over-stuffed my personal Christmas turkey. Buying less is achievable, but it is not the perfect solution. There is no straight-forward answer, because for every cry to smash capitalism there is the human cost in terms of unemployment, poverty, deprivation, and children mired in poverty. Neo-liberal economic theory expounds eternal growth, that we can consume infinite resources. Yet, in a time of climate change when we absolutely must consume less to ensure the planet does not overheat, this idea of infinite consumption is breaking the planet. The human cost is already apparent, the poverty and deprivation plain to see from London to Mumbai, from Jakarta to Sao Paulo. We are sold the world, sold the idea that buying one more cheap thing will make us better. Our collective vice is that we consume to fill the void that marketing creates in our core being, and then they sell us the solution wrapped up in a bow.
Capitalism is not going anywhere any time soon because it is so enmeshed within our lives. However, breaking down neo-liberal philosophies, providing a stable platform within which we can transition from fast consumption to slower, better quality cyclical economic processes will ensure that those at the bottom do not fall further behind. Raise wages to ensure people can afford better quality food and products that last longer. Bring in a universal basic income to act as a safety net for those who cannot work. Tax wealth and capital gains to bring equity to all of society. For if we do not, and radical action becomes the only choice there is no guarantee that the outcome will be any better than what we presently have.
Are these radical solutions? Only if you see consumption as the cornerstone of the human existence. Our lives are not salved by buying more, consuming more, throwing more away. It is the connections we make, the communities we build, and the society we live in. Yes, employment and work are part of who we are, but by letting our self-worth be defined by the jobs we have keeps us chained to the idea that working is the end to human existence, rather than a means to make ourselves and the people we care for more comfortable. If redefining human worth away from the labour we undertake is radical, does that not say something about who we are as a society? In a world we were are sold everything, if the panacea is more work then that is a poor place to be indeed.
There is no quick fix, no easy solution. If we break the wheel another will replace it, possibly worse than before. The neo-liberal revolution is coming to its apotheosis under Trump, Putin, Johnson, and Xi, whereby whole countries are being sold to a select few. To break through and change this takes more than simply voting. It takes vision, courage, and convincing whole societies that they have been sold the world for the betterment of the few. This is more than one person, one party, one class; it cuts across us all, and to solve it will take compromise, talking and collective action. To salve us all will take leadership, luck, and vision, and personal sacrifice in understanding that to build a sustainable world means cutting back on those very things that take our pain away.
