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Consumption, disillusionment and green politics

  
 
illmatic
16:39 / 01.01.03
This article by Gorge Monbiot sparked quite a few thoughts for me. For those who can't be bothered to read it, it's your basic eco-message of doom. What I found interesting about it was some connections with an interview in last week's (29/12) Observer supplement, with marketing analyst Martin Hayward. I guess if anyone knows the mind of the general public in terms of consumption etc it must be the marketing bods. I doubt if this interview is on line so a few quotes:

"There is money to be made in making people feel fufilled. People used to think, "if I buy all this stuff, I'll be happy". But know they realise: "Actually, i still feel just as shitty".

One thing I joke about is, invest in religon. I don't know how you do that unfortunately, but people do have a sense that something is missing from their lives.

We'eve got enough televisions, enough clothes, enough cars, enough kit. So now we spend more on gym membership, more on pampering, more on trips to special events. It used to be : "he's got a nice car, I'd better get one". Now it's "I went white-water rafting at the weekend. What did you do?"

Seeing these two pieces at this time of year, when the capitalist feeding frenzy is at it's peak, made me think. I wonder if we do have such a surfeit of material goods that we don't want any more, or maybe if our attitudes towards consumption are changing. What do people think - have you seen any evidence of this around you? How about your own attitudes toward consumption? How satisfying do you find it? (Please try and keep the broad picture when answering this - I don't want this thread to degenerate into the shopping habits of Barbeloids).

Tom started a fine thread elsewhere in this forum about the New Futility, wondering if the coming decade might be characterised by apathy (I think this thread had it's origin in a sense of frustration and disappointment with the fucking Labour Party). I wonder instead if the coming years might be shaped by our sense of disillusionment with excessive consumption. If so, this would be an obvious point of ingress for green politics - and we might even get some radical ideas in the political arena again.

Wildly, stupidly optimstic I know, but I thought I'd throw these ideas out for debate. What do people think - do you feel that people's attitudes toward consumption are changing? Is their any hope for any green ideas on the back of this? Any thoughts welcome.

And as a final note, this article brings out and articulates some of these themes, and suggests connections between our ecological awareness and spirituality. Again, any thoughts welcome.
 
 
Shortfatdyke
19:14 / 01.01.03
I've noticed a big difference between attitudes in London and down here in Cornwall. People generally do not appear to be so interested in having the latest thing, fashion is not such a big deal. There's a lot of poor people here but there is, too, in London, so I wouldn't say it was down to money/wages (although of course there are a lot more folk on higher wages in the city). I feel better, more at home here, because I'm not interested in having material things. I've been observing people here to see if they're more interested in environmental issues, and whether there's more incentive to care around here because it is so incredibly beautiful, but there was plenty of good people in London taking care of green spaces, so I've yet to come to a conclusion about that.
 
 
illmatic
13:30 / 02.01.03
Cutting and pasting from a PM:

"I definitely think that people aren't spending in quite such a headlong rush as they did in the late 90s. I have found that, where I used to spend money without even thinking about it, now I actually really don't want to buy many things at all ....
so many shops these days seem to be 'stuff' shops, selling things which no one really wants or needs (scented candles, horrible ornaments, you know what I mean ). Presumably it's because all the things people need they either can't afford or already have, so in order to get them to spend, shops push tat at them as 'gift ideas'."
 
 
grant
15:07 / 02.01.03
I wonder how much of this can be tied to the slide towards a service economy rather than a goods economy....

Do religion or life experiences (like white water rafting) count as services?
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
18:52 / 02.01.03
I'm sure I've blathered on about consumption on here before - it's one of the things that fascinates me in terms of the period I study (it was basically the first time that a significant proportion of the population other than the aristocracy had money to spend on comparison goods - whoops, my GCSE Geography showing there...). Usually historians have said that the engine of consumption is emulation, but I was heavily influenced by a chap who wrote that people tend to consume using what he called a 'character-action approach' - basically, that people consume (goods and culture) using an idea of 'virtue' which combines emulation with the idea of appropriateness, what is fitting and right for that person's idea of hir station in the world. Now what I am groping for here is some way of using this idea to explain the last decade or so... so this is entirely off the top of my head and please feel free to pick holes in it...

Basically, I reckon that disposable income has increased hugely over the last half-century (I remember reading a statistic from somewhere I have totally failed to remember, sorry, which showed that earlier this century the average spend on food was 30% of income - there's no way it's that much at the moment) and that that, coupled with an increase in advertising, gave people the idea (encouraged by governments in thrall to big banking - perhaps why this seems to be more prevalent here than on the continent?) that it was right and fitting that they should be able to buy all these flashy new things. Hence spiralling of borrowing on credit - from 50s families buying their twin-tubs on HP to all those women featured in magazines who get themselves horrendously in hock with storecards and credit cards. Practically everyone I know who's around my age lives permanently in debt - it seems to be the default mode these days. In fact I'd be surprised if I met someone my age who had no financial difficulties of that sort.

But what seems to have happened is, that with a lot of the spending boom of the 90s based on fairly unstable industries, when it all started going wrong (i.e. mid-2001, when suddenly everyone I knew started to lose their jobs), people actually found that they can't get out of that debt, that it's actually hard to get a decent job which also pays well even when you're thousands of pounds in debt to the student loans company, that housing prices have gone through the roof and - whoops! - pension funds are up shit creek as well.

So perhaps people aren't spending as much on random stuff as they once were; but I think maybe people are targetting their consumption more. There's still a fair amount of pressure to have the latest whatever, largely because that's how the the media and people in general seem to calculate status, so I don't think it's gone away. And that's what causes many of the environmental problems, I think - the high turnover of goods, the incessant drive towards production of new things to drive the consumer markets to get people to spend to... blah blah fishcakes.

So what needs to be done is somehow to get the idea of more responsible consumption across as part of the idea of 'virtue' which people use to govern their consumption. I haven't got any thoughts at present on that, but will rack my brains.

One thing I do intend to do is to ask shop assistants not to give me plastic bags whenever possible. I've got this nasty brown cloth carrier thing that I'll carry around instead - I'll start a trend...

That was extremely ranty and ill-thought-out...
 
 
Tryphena Absent
21:30 / 02.01.03
I'm sure that technology has increased the drive to acquire the latest thing. With digital TV, digital broadband, faster computers, mobile phones it seems that consumption must become targeted because there is so much choice it would be impossible to have everything. Advertising must contribute to all of this but when your friend has the new gadget in the pub it really escalates out of control.
 
 
Fist Fun
16:30 / 03.01.03
Hasn't consumption been classified almost as a virtue in itself. Consumption generates wealth in a free market economy. I think a call went out in America after 9/11 to keep spending as a patriotic act.

As you say Illmatic comsumption doesn't have to be just about material possesions it can be anything we spend money on. Personally, I spend far more each month on non-material consumption (sport, education). When I do spend on something material I am interested in added value rather than buying into a lifestyle.

I really appreciate having a mobile phone. It is genuinely useful and gives added value to life. What is depressing consumption wise is seeing waves of new products ( for instance 3G phones) being poured into shops each year which add little or nothing - yet which need to be create and sold for the market economy to function and for economic growth to take place.
 
 
No star here laces
09:06 / 06.01.03
Well there is one fairly brutal equation at the crux of this:

more consumption = more jobs = more environmental damage

Without the Christmas rush, without people wanting DVDs and new shoes and air conditioning, our economy collapses causing mass unemployment, negative equity and all sorts of other miseries. And as with everything, it's ordinary decent punters who suffer most.

But of course, as Monbiot points out, this model is inherently unsustainable.

Then, as the marketing guy says, consumption does not really satisfy, but what else is there for people? Religious christians comprise 60% of the US, which has the highest consumption of any place on earth. So even religion clearly doesn't do as much for us as consumption.

Which is where, for me, human nature enters the equation. A lot of things are said about human nature, but one is definitely true - it's competitive. We all want to be top dog, or at least a better dog than the neighbours. And we've got all sorts of ways of justifying it - by having nicer stuff (the classic model), by saying "I don't want your stuff, my stuff is more important" (the 'alternative' model) or "no stuff is important" (the asocial model).

Madeleine Bunting wrote a nice article on all this in today's guardian, relating consumption back to work again.

So clearly all this is circular and interrelated - work is boring because we are only interested in consumption (which is because work is boring). And most fascinating of all (and probably why it causes such hand-wringing) it's nearly all cultural. If there was something else that we thought was more important than "nice stuff" we wouldn't have these issues. But it's not enough to dismiss "nice stuff" out of hand as a stupid delusion of the masses when it is clearly so important.

The whole world continues to function as an economic entity because we all want "nice stuff".

I blame cinema and television. To describe a human being's life visually on screen we have to show their possessions.
 
 
illmatic
14:48 / 07.01.03
Grant: Interesting point. I’d thought that the reason for decline of the manufacturing economy in the West was globalisation, manufacturing consumer goods outside the West thus saving on labour costs etc. Suppose this doesn’t explain growth of service sector though does it? Any ideas?

(You might be interested to know that the same guy who wrote the JFK book I started a thread on a while ago, Robin Ramsey, has written a book on new Labour where he launches a real strong attack on the Blair goverment for selling manufacturing down the river, following in Maggie’s footsteps)

There probably is something in that notion... I don’t know if I’m clear enough on a definition of service or how the service economy works to answer that properly.

What I was basically doing by starting this thread was looking for optimism. The idea that people are becoming disillusioned (or maybe just saturated) with consumer goods) was an interesting one I thought and worth following up. Precious little optimism around elsewhere at the moment. The downside of this idea, of course (as Byron points out) is that people may be bored or whatever but there are no strong alternative values presented by our society. I think you’re right, BB, to say we shouldn’t get all elitist about the mindless masses either – this is where I disagree with you slightly about competition being the main driving force behind consumption. A lot of it is, esp. when you’re young, footloose and fancy free, but a lot of it’s driven by quite understandable urges to care for and provide for you and yours - but it’s if these urges get distorted by capitalism and consumption.

I’m really into this topic so help me out!

Don’t have any sort of answer at all (which is probably a good thing). Don’t see any real change until we face serious environmental difficulties, which is very topical at the moment, bearing in mind the flooding we’ve just had. It was interesting to see it on the news last night, climate change seems to be accepted as a reality at last, though nothing was mentioned about the causes (ie us) it was just “might be hard to insure your semi”.

Don’t know if anyone say the interview with Meyer Hillman in The Guardian a few weeks back. He sees climate change in an almost optimistic light, in that we might all pull together and do something about it, if it reaches crisis point. Interestingly this an area SF author Bruce Sterling is concerned with this as well, now. I’m beginning to ramble...

Any thoughts?
 
 
No star here laces
15:07 / 07.01.03
The service industry is vast: it includes retail, call-centres, cleaners, gyms - pretty much anything that doesn't involve manufacturing. The service sector has grown because people are increasingly willing to pay for convenience and because the cost of producing goods continues to fall thus freeing up capital to be spent on service and branding (by the manufacturers) or on services and branded goods (by the consumer).

When I say competition drives consumption, I mean competition drives excessive consumption. I'd define anyone who lives above the poverty line as having excessive consumption (so long as there are people who live below it...). But you're right, that is also an important driver.

And all the indicators are that the generation now reaching maturity are the most materialistic yet, so I wouldn't hold your breath for the end of capitalism just yet.
 
 
alas
15:18 / 07.01.03
Would that people would join together singing "I'd like to teach the world to sing" but half of them would sing "I'd like to buy the world a coke" and we're much more likely to fight over fewer resources than to work together to share. There's an excellent documentary video avaiable in the US anyway by Sut Jhally called "ADVERTISING AND THE END OF THE WORLD." (Media Education Foundation, circa 2000?). I showed the film to my students this past fall. His argument is also basically that the consumer-based economy is environmentally not sustainable--and that there's good evidence that we have only about 70 years or fewer to figure out what to do about it. But he also argues that the way advertising is structured it keeps us from being able to think collectively; it denies our collectivity and collective concerns and puts individual needs/desires center. And it keeps us from thinking about the future--markets can only think about a year in the future and commercials urge us to focus only on the NOW.

That's the problem: it's the most massive propoganda effort the world has ever known and in some ways it doesn't matter if we aren't all "brainwashed" into buying coke vs. pepsi, the constant barrage sends much more devastating messages: society doesn't really exist except on the periphery; happiness is attained through consumption (whether goods or services); the future is two minutes from now. No government, no other power on the earth has ever had the kind of non-stop propoganda effort as advertising does.

alas!
 
 
No star here laces
15:57 / 07.01.03
Bullshit.

I don't buy that argument for a second. Advertising never made people buy a shit product, and history is littered with examples of companies who blew millions on advertising to no avail. Advertising is a multplier and an agent of competition. If people like something, advertising can make them buy more of it. In a particular market, advertising can make people choose one brand. But it doesn't, individually or in totality, drive our economy.

As far as individualism goes, why of course, it must be advertising to blame! The collective drive towards individualism of philosophy, art and politics over the last few hundred years has nothing whatsoever to do with it!

I had my suspicions before, but The Corrections has convinced me - the left's hatred of advertising is utterly misdirected and is a preoccupation with the effects rather than the cause. Leftist intellectuals are frustrated with the people's inability to see that their dogma is better so this must, of course, be due to their feeble little minds being manipulated by advertising (just like our youth are corrupted by rap music, eh?).

So, sorry, I don't buy it.
 
 
Fist Fun
16:28 / 07.01.03
Perhaps the ability to selectively and intelligently consume in our own interests remaining cynical of advertising and wary of profit makers is a very relevant and useful skill.
 
 
No star here laces
17:01 / 07.01.03
And a universal one. In five years of market research I have never heard anyone claim to be influenced by advertising.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
10:43 / 08.01.03
That's slightly disingenous, Byron, in that I suspect you know full well that nobody *thinks* they're influenced by advertising (especially if they're educated, middle-class types who consider themselves too smart for that and a wee bit alternative to boot), but just about everybody is. I would however tentative agreement with your point that it's foolish and easy to see advertising as some kind of self-contained bete noir responsible for the ills of the world - however, as is often the case when people say "this is the problem with you silly lefties", I think you're twisting what alas actually said. Advertising is part of a process, sure, it's a symptom as well as a cause. But it *does* have effects - anything that big has too, by definition.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
20:31 / 08.01.03
I think the left, or parts of it, doesn't necessarily hate advertising per se and recognises its effectiveness - otherwise why would detournement have become a big(gish) thing? I quite enjoy picking advertisments to pieces and I suspect a lot of other people do too. Perhaps its the content of the adverts (there was a big piece by Jonathan Freedland in yesterday's Guardian - I think - about this, about how there's too much sex etc in public advertising, which came across as being a bit old farty but he may well have had a point) and the companies which make the products which people really object to?

I do agree with Flyboy that advertising has an effect, but I also agree that people are pretty wise to advertising. I might well be influenced by a piece of 'editorial' in a magazine which I know perfectly well is there because the manufacturer sent a free sample to the editor's desk. The fact that I know that won't necessarily stop me going out and buying the whatever-it-is...

I also think that advertising isn't responsible for a growth in the importance of the individual as opposed to the community - I think it probably reflects that growth as much as anything, though perhaps now iot also promotes it. On communities themselves - I don't know whether the existence of places like this board might point to the continuing importance of communities even in the midst of huge cultural consumption - I think it probably does.

Back to consumption... rant rant. I'm not sure that I hold with Byron's definition of 'excessive consumption' as being 'everything above the poverty line'. There are so many ways of trying to define that (I'm looking for a stat while I'm writing this and have just found an article in the Guardian which says that 7.8 million adults are victims of 'financial exclusion', i.e. unable to get credit from mainstream sources - suspect I am one of them... and I think credit is a major factor in consumption - as it enables people to consume on a deficit, which otherwsie they wouldn't be able to do - the entire consumer economy basically run on debt). Right, I can't find the article, but I seem to recall that the average 'real' (I think this means non-deficit spending?) per household in the UK was £490 per annum - dunno though, seems a bit high to me, though maybe the filthy rich over-compensate for the debt-ridden masses. But clearly there's a major difference between the kind of consumption that that amount of money allows, and 'paint it silver and stick ten grand on the price-tag' consumption...

I've rather lost the thread of what I was trying to say, I think. I don't agree with Byron that competition is the basic engine of consumption, as I said above; what I do think is that consumption has become the main way in which many people try ot get closer to their idea of who they really are, if that makes any sense. Can't deny people their right to do that; and our consumption of cultural artefacts and services etc makes us all party to it. The problem is that to detourne the process one has to make the alternative more desirable than the consumption which is doing environmental damage, and it's hard to make virtuous things - things which have the feeling of duty or obligation, I mean - desirable.

As witness to which, I have just eaten half a chocolate orange while writing this post, and if that's not excessive consumption I don't know what is...
 
 
No star here laces
11:21 / 09.01.03
Detournement is such a big thing, IMHO, because many intellectuals resent the sheer creativity and cultural relevance of advertising. The only option adbusters have to put across an anti-consumerist message is to use the consumerist messages, only clumsily subverted, because nothing else they do could have as much saliency and impact.

Advertising is fascinating in the context of consumption because it takes all the unhealthy little wrinkles in our society and uses them to sell more products. It exploits our foibles and weaknesses. But importantly, it does not create them. It is absolutely a reflection of society. 1950s advertising promises conformity and cleanliness. 1960s advertising promises style and glamour. 1970s advertising is visually rococo and has a decadent feel. 1980s advertising is brash, bombastic and materialistic. 1990s is post-modern and ironic. It shows changing relationships to consumer goods in the ways it uses to sell them. THe trajectory (to make sweeping generalisations, with all the inherent faults) goes from the collective (1950s) ambition to be as good as everyone else, to the individual (1990s) assertion that this product makes you unique, or at least clearly-defined.

Advertising today reeks of identity politics. "women are better than men", "old people can be smart too", "kids know best" because everyone is clutching at material ways of establishing an identity for themselves.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I agree with Kit-Kat in some ways. But that importantly I feel that competition is one of the most significant drivers in this search for identity. People want to buy into a better identity for themselves. We don't want to say "I'm a call-centre operative" we'd rather say "I'm an Arsenal fan and I enjoy fast cars" because it's sexier and more interesting. And no different, really, from saying "I'm an anti-capitalist", it's just that different sectors of society put a different value judgement on each. We are competitive within the "communities" that we self-identify with. Anyone who says there is no competition on Barbelith, for example, is clearly deceiving themselves.

And none of this is problematic in itself, except that these urges in the west appear to be destroying the lives of many of the less fortunate. Hence defining 'excessive' as above the poverty line. If you apply Maslow's hierarchy of needs (which haus raised some interesting questions about in another thread) it must surely be excessive of us to be servicing higher level needs when that capital could be used to service survival needs in the third world....
 
  
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