At this time of the year, the nation enters an hysteria of excessive buying. Lyn Bender considers why and whether there is more to life than rampant consumerism.
IF YOU HAD WISHED to portray the mindless frenzy of consumerism, you need go no further than the Boxing Day Sale ‘tradition’.
When breaking news is footage of devoted shoppers queuing all night in Burke Street, Melbourne, in order to get that special bargain and a brief sense of triumph and victory, something is seriously wrong.
As with all addictions, the pre-Christmas Day buying hysteria has not resulted in satiation but has only inflamed the post-Christmas buying mania.
But it is not limited to Australia.
In London, they have wended and curved their way along Oxford Street and outside Selfridges in freezing temperatures to secure those half price gems. In Canada, icy weather is reported to have been no match for Boxing Day bargain hunters. In New Zealand, Boxing Day sales were reported to be ‘manic’. I am relieved to discover that there are no Boxing Day sales in Paris.
But in Australia Fair (and I just mean on the Gold Coast) citizen consumers have lined up to do their patriotic duty and spend, spend, spend! The booty is typically carried home in plastic bags, while the sales are to be extended for all of January.
Admittedly, my view may be antipathetic, as I watched the news ‒ repeated ad nauseum ‒ that Boxing day will save us. I was watching this as a visitor to an aged care facility, which is itself a solid testimony to the vacuousness and futility of overconsumption. Where personal space becomes confined to one room and treasured objects are photographs, some bric a brac and some objets d’art and remembered experience. Where a visit from the house pet brings greater joy than once may have come from the purchase of a spanking new appliance.
It is a tranquil slow paced sanctuary until when one of the carers asks me — what did you buy today?
I'm startled. She is Asian and may be bemused by this largely Commonwealth nations custom.
She explains to me:
“Did you buy at the sales”?
"No, no," I laugh.
It is sobering to confront the end of longevity — the aged care tsunami that lies ahead if, as predicted, the trend towards survival into the nineties increases.
But for now, I am relieved that we have found this oasis of care for my mother.
I am also however, thinking of that other Tsunami that hit Asia on Boxing Day in 2004, but this did not feature much on the news on Boxing Day. When boats, houses, belongings and lives ‒ many, many precious lives ‒ were all swept away in a few minutes.
Other images come to mind, of bushfires consuming all in their path as they did in the fires of Black Saturday in Victoria 2009 and the extreme fires in October 2013 in New South Wales.
Or of washing away the bits and pieces of a lifetime in the floods of 2012 in Queensland, where houses and lives were swept away in a tsunami like torrent of water.
Or Cyclone Yasi, that blew away so much in its path.
But blissfully unaware of the connection and failing to join the dots we continue buying stuff, most of which will not be recycled and which contains or is entirely composed of non-biodegradable plastic. Our stuff is destined to accumulate in the seas or as landfill.
Plastic contamination of our oceans has been described as like ‘a soup of confetti particles’ that exacts a huge toll on marine life.
Other stuff we buy pollutes in its own unique way. Global electronic e-waste is set to reach 65.4 million tons annually by 2017.This toxic waste comes from our discarded upgraded mobile phones, TVs, computers and microwaves. There are programs to recycle these potential threats to our health and the environment, but they are piecemeal compared to our rate of production.
Research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, Chris Berg, is all for our consumer culture, claiming it enables family relationships to flourish. We can Skype and we can fly around the globe. That is, we can if we are in the elite group that benefits from this wonderful, if inequitable, free market economy.
Berg praises the joys of that Aussie icon ‒ the freestanding barbeque ‒ that is getting cheaper:
‘The 1978 barbecue shown here cost $670 in 2012 dollars. These days you can pick up the same thing for $90 and a gas bottle for $30.’
He adds a link to Bunning’s Warehouse for the convenience of the reader. Now that is impressive market research.
For those who may be unaware, the IPA was until a week or so ago the employer of Tim Wilson, the climate change skeptic recently appointed to the very same Human Rights Commission that the IPA wants abolished.
The IPA has backers in the mining industry, including Exxon, BP, BHP Billiton, Caltex, Phillip Morris, Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch, and is an ardent promoter of climate change denial. Not so hard to join the dots there. The IPA also has links to the Heartland Institute in the US. Watch the below video from their website which includes co-opted experts like Australia’s own Bob Carter, a climate denialist, who receives regular payola from Heartland. The methods used are common to Tobacco Industry lobbying and climate change obfuscation.
The Heartland Institute was founded by the Koch Brothers ‒ huge fossil fuel billionaires and the beating heart of the U.S. Tea Party Movement ‒ and calls itself a “think tank”. Some of its ‘thinking’ is about how best to unscrupulously fund and promote climate science denial. They are the modern incarnation of the Sophists, decried by Plato. Sounding plausible they borrow truths ‒ such as science must be sceptical ‒ in order to sow doubt.
Sophists could be seen as the forefathers of modern political and media spin, that manipulate ‘truth’ for power and money. And the ‘dark money’ that flows to denial is immense. According to the Guardian, a recent study revealed that U.S. conservative groups spend a combined billion dollars a year to combat climate action. And that would be a conservative estimate, due to a failure to properly disclose.
Meanwhile, we shop and shop and shop.
The oxymoron of ‘retail therapy’ has become part of the lexicon. This now commonly used slogan promotes consumption as being good for you.
Just as tobacco, was once promoted as relaxing and healthy, with pictures of doctors smoking, looking reassuring.
Does shopping make you happy?
Is it actually a form of therapy? And even if it destroys the long term future of our planet, what is the immediate gain for those who shop as opposed to those who sell? While many commentators agree that there can be an initial buzz from acquiring a purchase, many suggest that this is short lived. More pleasure comes from the anticipation and longing for the object, than from its acquisition.
There is a phenomenon termed Hedonistic Adaptation. In time, we adapt to circumstances as normal, good or bad.
The new house becomes plebeian and the new lover is less exciting over time. That first lick of ice-cream may be exquisite, but by the time we are halfway through we may hardly give it any attention. So we need to up the dose to achieve the buzz, just as anyone with an alcohol or tobacco addiction does. It is a wanting, longing, satiation cycle that promotes repetition.
Research indicates hedonic decline after purchase. Wanted it, acquired it, so what now?
Experiences bring more lasting satisfaction than merely buying objects. Hence the helpfulness of mindfulness and its attention to the appreciation of immediate, experience, including our planet and its beauty, rather than endlessly pursuing, mindless frenzied activity.
The focus on markets at the expense of the planet, its species, biodiversity and of future generations ensures we become mindless consumers. ‘Shop till you drop’, now has sinister connotations.
The choice is ours to contribute or to consume?
In the words of the late activist Henry Spira, as quoted by ethicist Peter Singer:
“I guess, basically, one wants to feel that one’s life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage. I think that one likes to look back and say that one’s done the best one can to make this a better place for others.”
Or you can decide to just keep shopping. Numbly obedient to the banal words of former U.S. President George Bush, who famously ‒ or is that infamously ‒ said:
“… and I encourage you all to go shopping more.”
You can follow Lyn on Twitter @lynestel.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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