Consumerism isn't evil

Hello friends my name is JJ and as you guys might know I recently went on Destiny's podcast to talk about various things for those who are unfamiliar Destiny is among the most famous and popular internet-based political commentators working today he has a somewhat intense and combative personality and loves to debate everyone and anyone but his core beliefs are basically moderate and philosophically the two of us have a lot in common which is why I think that our chat was a good one and I will link to it in the thing below but anyway something we discussed a fair bit during our conversation was the subject of gratitude which is something I have been pondering a lot lately one of my core beliefs is that the broad culture of this continent too often encourages and celebrates the opposite of gratitude and that this cultural bias is having ever more toxic and destructive effects these days it seems like the quickest path to getting a reputation for intelligence and insight in America is to just endlessly complain about the status quo in increasingly florid language it doesn't matter if you are on the right or the left it is always way more fashionable to complain and denounce than appreciate or enjoy it is so much cooler to affect a Persona of exhausted disgust or outrage about the component onent parts of our civilization then Express even grudging admiration or respect for any of it this civilizational self-loathing comes in a lot of different forms including cynicism about democracy paranoia about modern technology and knee-jerk skepticism towards any claim of social progress for any group of marginalized peoples but the flavor I wanted to talk about today is the rhetoric of an consumerism it is easily one of the most popular pan ideological styles of complaining and in my opinion one of the most harmful so consumerism is a term that is often used to describe one of the fundamental characteristics of modern American society namely that we like consumer goods as our society has grown wealthier and more technologically advanced over time we have been able to purchase and use an Ever greater diversity of affordable conveniences and luxuries everything from pre-made foods to home electronics to fashionable clothes to toys for our pets consumerism has accordingly risen to become a central pillar of American civilization equal in importance to things like work or politics anti-consumerism meanwhile is the argument that there is something deeply morally wrong with the way that our society makes buys sells and uses all of these consumer products as well as decrying the broad infrastructure that creates and distributes these consumer goods in the first place which includes inventors and companies and stores and advertisers the most strident anti-consumerist tend to portray the cycle of production and consumption that defines our consumerist economy as something deeply grotesque and pathological sometimes even something akin to a form of slavery a particularly Arch example of this would be the popular YouTube video The Story of stuff that was put out by the tides foundation in 2009 it argues that basically every step of modern consumerism is actively and purposefully Sinister that all of our consumer goods are manufactured by horribly exploitive labor practices that everything we buy is full of toxic chemicals that are slowly killing us that all public demand for anything is the result of psychological manipulations by corporations and that most things we buy serve no purpose Beyond generating garbage that is destroying the environment in the US we spend three to four times as many hours shopping as our counterparts in Europe do so we're in this ridiculous situation where we go to work maybe two jobs even and we come home and we're exhausted so we plop down on our new couch and watch TV and the commercial tell us you suck so you got to go to the mall to buy something to feel better and then you got to go to work more to pay for the stuff you just bought so you come home and you're more tired so you sit down and you watch more TV and tells you go to the mall again and we're on this crazy work watch spend treadmill and we could just stop now I don't just want to immediately brush off some of these more specific anti-consumerist critiques I mean there is obviously some truth to them when it comes to environmental concerns in particular we should always be conscious of the degree that our consumer habits can have real world consequences and accordingly we should always seek to minimize our trash and dispose of things in the correct way but you know this is also an example of a realm in which the uncontested popularity of anti-consumerist rhetoric has made us kind of overly credulous and shallow in our pessimism because even though you don't hear that much about it our consumer culture has actually been getting progressively more and more environment mentally responsible in recent years driven by changes in both consumer and producer Behavior alike for one the much demonized corporations that provide us with our consumer goods our aboot is environmentally conscious as they have ever been for all of human history in fact it is pretty much all but impossible these days to visit any Corporation website without getting bombarded with all of the various green initiatives they want you to know about but of course by and large we don't want to know about it the conventional wisdom in American culture is just that the corporations are screwing the environment and most of us don't bother to look into the facts beyond that other than maybe sharing the occasional Sensational headline that reinforces the sort of pessimism that our culture celebrates but in reality there are plenty of positive trend lines out there like did you know that many of the largest corporations inica America including Walmart Target and General Mills have all signed a pact committing to exclusively using plastic packaging that is reusable recyclable or compostable as early as next year according to the most recent numbers from 2022 they have nearly passed the 50% Mark Amazon meanwhile is officially in the process of phasing out the use of their plastic delivery bags which they have already done in Europe most of the biggest consumer good companies are also just using far less plastic in their packaging overall these days than they used to thanks in part to Innovations in plastic technology Unilever for instance claims to have cut their plastic use by a fifth over the last decade by using lighter packages Starbucks cups meanwhile have cut plastic use by up to 20% while the plastic used to make McDonald Donald's Happy Meal toys is now nearly 50% recycled so what is our reaction to hearing stuff like this is it to feel optimistic and encouraged that the major consumer goods producers are taking their responsibilities to the planet seriously or is it just to assume that this must be some giant greenwashing scam and that everyone involved must be lying and disingenuous and all the rest of it which video do you think would get more clicks now in my opinion the even more pernicious anti-consumerist narrative is the one that simply posits that the lifestyle of the average American Consumer is something inherently pointless oppressive and pathetic you know this idea that if you like to shop and if you like to own things and if you derive any part of your personal identity from consumer goods you are this fundamentally weak and simple-minded person deserving of revulsion contempt and pity and there are a lot of powerful narratives about this flowing from both the cultural left and the cultural right the cultural left especially the far-left doesn't like anything that valorizes capitalism which any sort of overt appreciation of consumer goods obviously does since the capitalist supply and demand system is what produces all of these Goods in the first place people who appreciate consumerism justify their survival of capitalism and and of course if you are somebody invested in a political project of making capitalism look horrible we can't have that the cultural right meanwhile has become increasingly bossy and sanctimonious insisting that if you don't live one very particular old-fashioned traditional lifestyle you are a disgusting wimpy beta cuck you shouldn't enjoy clothes or toys or snacks or Electronics because liking anything other than making a lot of babies with your heterosexual Trad spouse is seen as a sign of a decadent failing West similarly as the Right comes to steal more and more anti-science hysteria from the left they are becoming the faction most likely to whail about how all of the popular consumer products are full of scary toxins that will steal your vill and give you a weak chin ideologues on both sides are also very fond of aru ments positing that a happy consumer is actually a spiritually empty husk of a human being who only turns to material things to fill a void that is supposed to be filled with a love of Jesus or trees or yoga or whatever my rebuttal however is that it is actually pretty difficult and rare to sustain any sort of spiritual movement that doesn't include at least some some element of materialism I would even say that buying and owning things inevitably comes to play a prominent role in just about any spiritual or philosophical movement that hangs around long enough people then often scorn this as evidence that a movement is selling out or becoming commercialized but to me it signals that we humans are just naturally drawn to obtaining and owning things at some fundamental level making it difficult for us to experience sincere love or enjoyment for anything without expressing at least some of that love materially I grew up in a community with a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses and of all of their weird beliefs the one that consistently weirded out Outsiders the most was their dogmatic refusal to give presents on birthdays or Christmas something about that just instinctively feels wrong and even somewhat anti-human and I don't think it's because we've just all been brainwashed by the shopping industrial complex religious movements that attempt to adopt a strict anti-materialist position tend to get a lot of favorable press in American culture because they are helpful as good examples to shame the rest of us but in reality I think they're just preaching yet another form of Pious exstension from a natural instinct that winds up being every bit as oppressive and unsatisfying as the thing it is supposed to be offering Liberation from and indeed in much the same way that spiritual admonitions to abstain from types of sex or food often wind up producing a heavy psychological burden of guilt and humiliation on those who fail to live up to the unnatural demand so too do those calling for anti-consumerist abstinence often spiral into a kind of self-righteous misery as they attempt to practice what they preach even just anecdotally here on YouTube I often feel like the most stereotypically Jolly YouTuber is one of these chubby middle-aged guys who likes collecting things while the most stereotypically miserable YouTuber is a strident anti- capitalist video essay person who probably spends a lot of time trying to come up with anti- capitalist rationalizations for why he enjoys movies and video games produced by the market economy and this is what brings me back to the larger point to boot gratitude the fact is we live in a society of enormous prosperity and material abundance a byproduct as I said earlier of the centuries of incredible economic growth and technological innovation that have defined modern civilization on this continent so there comes a point I think in which we are morally obligated to honor and appreciate this inheritance a culmin a of a history allowing us access to so many wonderful consumer products that stimulate our senses and imaginations and intellects we are talking about consumer goods that not only make life more enjoyable for ourselves but can also provide a basis for building communities and relationships through acts and traditions of shared consumption whether that means dining out with friends giving gifts to a loved one or being part of a subculture based depreciating some product whose quality and cultural significance you feel is deserving of reverence again I don't want to be so sentimental as to suggest that a consumerist society brings no challenges it obviously does and it is also true that just as different people have different appetites in all Realms of Life consumerism exists on a spectrum in which not Everyone likes or wants consumer goods in the same way or in the same amount but it also seems to me that a very confused and dysfunctional Society will be one in which some huge foundational pillar of that Society a pillar that is by all accounts popular and providing overwhelmingly positive results for that Society has curiously few Defenders or even worse is regarded as a subject of scorn and embarrassment by that society's intellectuals and artists and that is pretty much the case with consumerism as far as I can tell even though we inhabit a civilization where consumerist activities like shopping and Entrepreneurship and product Nostalgia and giftgiving and collecting play a dominant role in shaping the character of our culture and bringing great joy to those who partake our thought leaders and artists nevertheless tend to be disproportionately anti-consumerist preaching doctrines of guilt and shame about the degree that we have allowed consumerism to lead us off one righteous path or another and even then these intellectuals are often Hypocrites who enjoy consumption and materialism and capitalism as much as anyone else but feel their respectability as intellectuals would be undermined if they ever made the case for liking the system that they so obviously do what I think we need these days is a new ethic of healthy consumerism that is capable of expressing a Frank and open gratitude for the many benefits of living in a wealthy and prosperous consumer Society while also finding ways to acknowledge and incorporate some of the fair and good faith critiques of consumerism when it comes to environmental concerns in particular I think it is vital that the consumer public notice support and encourage initiatives being taken by the consumer goods suppliers to meet the goals of sustainability and waste reduction that they are carrying out on our behalf it is quite obnoxious when the anti-consumerist are so relentlessly cynical about all of this and sort of arly suggests that getting rid of the whole consumerist capitalist system is the only real solution it's very disingenuous given that a almost no one seems to sincerely believe this judged by their actions and B it is not obvious at all that going that far is even necessary but reaching a conclusion like that also requires paying close attention to the progress currently being made which isn't something that is particularly valued in a society whose culture is defined by self-loathing pessimism so unless we all just want to feel like miserable guilty Hypocrites forever I say that culture has to change do you find my rhetoric persuasive at all I'm not a genius I don't have the answers to everything that ails us but it does seem like there is an important argument missing in our conversation about consumerism this was my attempt to provide it hey

Channel: J.J. McCullough

Views: 102,130

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Id: MpGp8fEKEtM

Length: 18min 9sec (1089 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024