HISTORY OF IDEAS - Consumerism

[Music] the most of history the overwhelming majority of the Earth's inhabitants have owned more or less nothing the clothes they stood up in some bowls of pot in a pan perhaps a broom and if things were going really well a few farming implements nations and people's remained consistently poor global GDP did not grow at all from year to year the world was in aggregate as hard up in 1800 as it had been at the beginning of time however starting in the early 18th century in the countries of northwestern Europe a remarkable phenomenon occurred economies began to expand and wages to rise families who'd never before had any money beyond what they needed just to survive found they could go shopping for small luxuries a comb or a mirror a spare set of underwear a pillow some thicker boots or a towel their expenditure created a virtuous economic cycle the more they spent the more businesses grew the more wages rose by the middle of the 18th century observers recognized that they were living through a period of epochal change that historians have since described as the world's first consumer revolution it was in Britain where the changes were most marked enormous new industries sprang up to cater for the widespread demand for goods that had once been the preserve of the very rich alone in England cities you could buy furniture from Chippendale Hepplewhite and Sheraton pottery from Wedgwood and Derby cutlery from the Smither ease of Sheffield and hats shoes and dresses featured in the best-selling magazines like the gallery of fashion and the ladies magazine styles for clothes and hair which had formerly gone unchanged for decades now altered every year often in extremely theatrical and impractical directions in the early 1770s there was a craze for decorated wigs so tall their tops could only be accessed by standing on a chair it was fun for the cartoonists so vivid and numerous were the consumer novelties that the austere dr. Johnson wryly wondered whether prisoners were also soon to be hanged in a new way the Christian Church looked on and did not approve up and down England clergymen delivered bitter sermons against the new materialism they called it vanity which was a sin sons and daughters were to be kept away from shops God would not look kindly on those who paid more attention to household decoration than the state of their souls but there now emerged an intellectual revolution that sharply altered the understanding of the role of vanity in an economy in 1723 a London physician called Bernard Mandeville published an economic tract titled the fable of the bees which proposed that contrary to centuries of religious and moral thinking what made countries rich and therefore safe honest generous spirited and strong was a very minor uh nella vated and apparently undignified activity shopping for pleasure it was the consumption of what Mandeville called fripperies hats bonnets gloves butter dishes soup tureens shoe horns and hair clips that provided the engine for national prosperity and allowed the government to do in practice or the church only knew how to sermonize about in theory make a genuine difference to the lives of the weak and the poor the only way to generate wealth argued Mandeville was to ensure high demand for absurd and unnecessary things of course no one needed embroidered handbags silk line slippers or ice creams but it was a blessing that they could be prompted by fashion to want them for on the back of demand for such trifles workshops could be built apprentices trained and hospitals funded Mandeville shocked his audience with the starkness of the choice he placed before them a nation could either be very high-minded spiritually elevated intellectually refined and dirt poor or a slave to luxury and idle consumption and very rich man Devils dark thesis went on to convince almost all the great Anglophone economists and political thinkers of the 18th century there were nevertheless some occasional departures from the new economic orthodoxy one of the most spirited and impassioned voices was that of Switzerland's greatest philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau shocked by the impact of the consumer revolution on the manners and atmosphere of his native Niva he called for a return to a simpler older way of life of the sort he had experienced in Alpine villages or read about in travellers accounts of the native tribes of North America in the remote corners of a pencil or the vast forests of Missouri there was blessedly no concern for fashion and no one upmanship around hair extensions Rousseau recommended closing Geneva's borders and imposing crippling taxes on luxury goods so the people's energies could be redirected towards non material values he looked back with fondness to the austere martial spirit of Sparta however even if Rousseau disagreed with Mandeville he did not seek to deny the basic premise behind his analysis it truly appeared to be a choice between decadent consumption and wealth on the one hand and virtuous restraint and poverty on the other it was simply that Rousseau unusually preferred virtue to wealth the parameters of this debate have continued to dominate economic thinking ever since weary encounter them in ideological arguments between capitalists and communists and free marketeers and environmentalists but for most of us the debate is no longer pertinent we simply accept that we will live in consumer economies with some very unfortunate side effects to them crass advertise in foodstuffs that are unhealthy for us products that are disconnected from any reasonable assessment of our needs all this in exchange for economic growth and high employment we have chosen wealth over virtue an irony Laden acceptance of this dichotomy is what underpins the approach of many pop artists in mid twentieth century America for example Kleiss Oldenburg developed a reputation for taking modest consumer items many of them food-related and reproducing them an enormous scale usually in outdoor settings in vibrant polyester or vinyl in city squares what one might once have expected to find statues in honor of political leaders or religious saints one now came across out sized hamburgers giant cheesecakes huge fries decked with ketchup or perhaps Oldenburg's most famous work a 12 meter high stainless steel inverted ice cream cone Oldenburg's vast versions of small things playfully directed our attention to the book dependence of modern economies on the mass consumption of what are in human terms some deeply negligible products yet the scale of Oldenburg's objects was only superficially absurd because it rather precisely reflected their actual importance in our collective economic destinies nevertheless as Oldenburg seemed to concede it was peculiar to be living in a civilization founded on the back of buns and sweetened tomato paste the bay 'this hinted at by the deflated d tumescent appearance of many of the giant burgers hotdogs and pizzas the one question that's rarely been asked is whether there might be a way to attenuate the dispiriting choice to draw on the best aspects of consumerism on the one hand and high-mindedness on the other without suffering their worst side's moral decadence and profound poverty might it be possible for a society to develop that allows for consumer spending and therefore provides employment and welfare yet of a kind directed at something other than vanities and superfluities might we shop for something other than nonsense in other words might we have wealth and a degree of virtue it is this possibility of which we find some intriguing hints in the work of Adam Smith an 18th century economist too often read as a blunt apologist for all aspects of consumerism but in fact one of its more subtle and visionary analysts in his book The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 Adam Smith seems at points willing to concede two key aspects of Mandeville's argument consumer societies do help the poor by providing employment based around satisfying what are often rather sub-optimal purchases Smith was as ready as other economists to mock the triviality of some consumer choices while admiring their consequences all those embroidered lace handkerchiefs jewel snuff boxes and miniature temples made of cream for dessert they were flippant he conceded that they encourage trade created employment and generated immense wealth and could therefore be firmly defended on this score alone however Smith held out some fascinating hopes for the future he pointed out that consumption didn't invariably have to involve that reading of frivolous things he had seen the expansion of the Edinburgh book trade and knew how large a market higher education might become he understood how much wealth was being accumulated through the construction of Edinburgh is extremely handsome and Noble new town he understood that humans have many higher needs that require a lot of labour in intelligence and work to fulfill but the lie outside of capitalist enterprise as conceived off by realists like Bernard Mandeville among these our need for education for self understanding for beautiful cities and for rewarding social lives the ultimate goal of capitalism and Adam Smith's view was to tackle happiness in all its complexities psychological and not just merely material the capitalism of our times still hasn't entirely come round to resolving the awkward choices that Bernard Mandeville and jaja Crusoe circled but the crucial hope for the future is that we may not forever need to be making money off rather exploitative silly or vain consumer appetites that we may also learn to generate enormous profits from helping people as consumers and producers in the truly important and ambitious aspects of their lives the reform of capitalism hinges on an odd sounding but critical task a new kind of consumerism the conception of an economy focused around buying and selling services and goods focused on our higher needs you

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Keywords: alain de botton, tsol, sol, the school of life, things, consumerism, history, capitalism, buying, stuff, happiness, joy, learning, education, therapy, philosophy, study, information, think, thought, wonder, earning money, alain, de botton, PL-History

Id: Y-Unq3R--M0

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/BuddhistSagan]

This was posted before but I thought it might help some people who have conflicting thoughts this holiday