Here is the beginning of a weekend
magazine article on consumerism though I wasn't sure if it was more
appropriate for the Virginia Postrel post today. It's worth reading through this to
get to the capuchin monkeys.
Also note references to the cult of workaholism, competitive consumerism
and perceptions of
fairness. Lots of good sociological observation here, enough to
make some of us very ill and hope not everyone in the Third World thinks we
are all this way. Just this weekend I heard taped political commentary by
Paul Krugman (here in Portland for a book tour) deploring that despite the
wealth of America our poor are not better off than other [KWC] comparable
nation's poor, if only because of the cost of and lack of health care - and
housing.
References to other writings included.
Please go to the link and check out the photo of the first consumer
profiled. At 14 pages and 77KB the word formatted document won't go through
the FW filter. - KWC
Quote:
"Consumerism
was the triumphant winner of the ideological wars of the 20th century,
beating out both religion and politics as the path millions of Americans
follow to find purpose, meaning, order and transcendent exaltation in their
lives.
Liberty in this market democracy has, for many, come to mean freedom to buy
as much as you can of whatever you wish, endlessly reinventing and
telegraphing your sense of self with each new purchase...."This society of
goods is not merely the inevitable consequence of mass production or the
manipulation of merchandisers. It is a
choice, never consciously made, to define self and community through the
ownership of goods."
Quote:
"I
have a very dark view of human nature," Small says. "I think the reason the
monkey study has gotten so much publicity is that it touches something in
all of us . . . There is a contingent that says the
reason humans have such big brains is to keep track of social
information,
and we keep track of it all day long, including who got
what."
In
recent years, who has gotten what in the United States might leave the
capuchins screeching. In the decades following World War II, Americans in
almost every income bracket saw their earnings increase at about the same
rate. Since the early 1970s, however, the very wealthiest Americans have
enjoyed virtually all the income growth, creating what Cornell economist
Robert H. Frank calls a winner-take-all
society.
The lucky few have largely spent what they've earned, he says. In the
process they've shaped everyone else's perceptions of what constitutes the
good life."
Acquiring
Minds
Inside America's
All-Consuming Passion
By
April Witt, WP Staff Writer, Sunday, December 14, 2003; Page W14 @
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53732-2003Dec10.html
A
blonde with a perfect blow-dry flips through the pages of Us magazine on the
morning shuttle to New York. She's not interested in reading about
celebrities; she just wants to check out what they're wearing. "I have this
dress," she says, pointing to a photograph of actress Jada Pinkett Smith
wearing a $2,300 bronze-toned satin Gucci cocktail dress with a wide belt
shaped like a corset.
The
fall shopping season is almost over, and Jamie Gavigan, a colorist at a
Georgetown hair salon, is heading to New York City on one last fashion
mission. She wants to find a killer cocktail dress and satisfy her special
footwear urges at the Manolo Blahnik shoe
salon.
Jamie
shops in Washington, too, at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue and some
pricey boutiques. But two or three times a year, the 36-year-old single
mother flies to New York to more fully indulge her fashion passions. It's
her reward for standing on her feet nine hours a day, mixing chemicals and
working straight through lunch to earn the six-figure income that makes
these shopping expeditions possible.
When
the shuttle lands at La Guardia, Jamie hops into a cab and heads to her
favorite department store, Barneys, at 61st and Madison, one of the
culture's new cathedrals, where the affluent bring their soaring aspirations
for better living through luxury shopping. "It's all good here," she says.
"It's disturbing, isn't it? I like everything they
have."
On
her feet, she's wearing $750 Manolo Blahnik black suede boots with
four-inch-high stiletto heels. On her arm, she's carrying a blue Birkin tote
bag by Hermes de Paris. If you could buy one, which now you can't, prices
for the Birkin would start at $5,000 for plain leather and climb to more
than $70,000 for crocodile renditions with diamond-encrusted hardware.
Swamped in recent years by demand for the bag, Hermes had been asking
would-be customers to put their names on a waiting list. Jamie waited two
years for her Birkin to arrive. Last year, Hermes stopped adding names to
the list.
...Deny
it, outraged, if you will. Rail against unchecked materialism like some
puritanical scold. Pray for the soul of a nation wandering lost in the
malls, more likely to shop than to vote, volunteer, join a civic
organization or place a weekly donation in the collection plate of a local
house of worship.
Consumerism
was the triumphant winner of the ideological wars of the 20th century,
beating out both religion and politics as the path millions of Americans
follow to find purpose, meaning, order and transcendent exaltation in their
lives.
Liberty in this market democracy has, for many, come to mean freedom to buy
as much as you can of whatever you wish, endlessly reinventing and
telegraphing your sense of self with each new purchase. Over the course of
the century the culture of consumption and American life became "so closely
intertwined that it is difficult for Americans to see consumerism as an
ideology or to consider any serious alternatives or modifications to it,"
historian Gary Cross writes in An All-
Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America. "This
society of goods is not merely the inevitable consequence of mass production
or the manipulation of merchandisers. It
is a choice, never consciously made, to define self and community through
the ownership of goods."
Luxury
goods in particular -- from SUVs with heated leather seats to wide-screen
TVs and stainless steel ranges the size of tanks -- have become such
accepted symbols of the good life that they are considered must-haves, even
by those who can't really afford them. The
pursuit of them has become so intertwined with the pursuit of
happiness
that professor and author James B. Twitchell talks about the shopper's
epiphany: "It's that feeling of, phew, I found it, I am
saved."
Call
it shallow, Twitchell says, but a belief
system that allows people to reinvent themselves through shopping is a heck
of a lot fairer than the old systems where rank was a birthright and largely
immutable. And competitive consumerism is a lot less bloody than
epic battles over whose God is greater.
Consumers
like Jamie live and shop at the nexus of two of the most powerful forces
shaping luxury consumerism: the concentration of wealth among top American
wage earners and mass media that bombard consumers at every income level
with images of the lush lifestyles that money can
buy.
Celebrities
in particular have become pied pipers of consumption. Salma Hayek wearing a
corset-like Versace on the cover of InStyle magazine can trigger a
nationwide run on the dress. Teenage boys watching "MTV Cribs" dream about
owning the Mercedes S600 and G500 parked in the driveway of football star
Terrell Owens's home. Viewers desire so much of what they see on "Sex and
the City" that the HBO Web site offers virtual tours of the main characters'
apartments and lists where to buy some of their
possessions.
"The
assumption is that celebrities have access to everything," explains Hal
Rubenstein, fashion director of InStyle magazine. "Consequently, if a
celebrity chooses to carry a Birkin bag out of all the things in the world
they could possibly carry, then she in some odd way starts acting like an
editor or personal shopper. If Sarah Jessica Parker can have all those
things, and a Birkin bag is good enough for her, then it's good enough for
me. It's that simple."
Nineteenth-century
philosophers and economists
who viewed goods as utilitarian envisioned a not-so-distant day when
American technical and manufacturing prowess would easily provide for
everyone's basic material needs, freeing all workers to enjoy more family
time and leisure. In the 1930s, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that
within a few generations everyone would be working two-hour
days.
"Their assumption was that our needs
would be satisfied," Cross says. "That was the assumption through most of
human history. What happened, of course, is that they were wrong. We never
have maxed out on goods. Now, we realize that goods are not essentially
about satiating material needs, physical needs, but rather psychological and
social ones. And those needs, it would appear, are absolutely
endless."
