Thoughts on Consumerism

We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.

Ah! Consumerism, the child of Capitalism and Money, by the birth of it marked the beginning of the end of history. In the famous book 'End of History and The Last Man' by Francis Fukuyama, he states that the history as we know it ended by the fall of the Berlin wall. But I believe the end of history started way back when consumerism was born in America. At the time of writing this blog, it has spread all over the world. We all live in a consumerist culture. We consume, a lot, more than we ever need, most of the times we don't even need.

The growth of consumerism was provided by capitalism, the free market. It promotes competition among the industries and thereby giving the advantage to the consumers. The producers advertise their products in such a way that the consumer feels the need to buy it. When Steve Jobs come on stage and hold up his new Iphone in his hands, the crowds cheers. When he shows of the fancy tech inside the phone in an exaggerated way, the people are all the more compelled to buy the new Iphone giving thousands of dollars, taking credits and EMI's. The Samsung CEO who is watching this makes an even more fancier phone and the people drop their newest Iphones and buy the newest Galaxy S. At the end, even with all the fancy displays and sensors, both product is a phone. You might wish if it was a washing machine but it can never be anything else other than a phone and you will use it as a phone.

The same concept applies to everything. Cars with gigantic displays and sunroofs, cooldrinks that makes you a monster, fancy furniture, automated cooking machines. We can go around our house for 5 minutes and we can find 5 things that we bought and never used again. Sometimes it's a shoe among 10 other shoes that you have. May be it is a t-shirt that you never knew you had. If you just look into your phone, you can find 10 apps that you used may be once in your lifetime. And the funniest thing is that, at the same time that we buy the expensive phone, we look for the cheapest restaurant to eat. If we can find a McDonalds near by, life is perfect. You get to be fat at cheap rates. And then go to the next Starbucks to buy the over priced Caramel Latte Frap Large with Peanuts and S**t all the while ignoring the homeless people sitting on the street. Not my f**king problem.

The technology and products are made to make our life easier. But it is far from the truth. We are never content. 10 years ago, if we wanted to write someone, we had to depend on snail mail. It took weeks to reach the person on the other side of the world and another week to get an answer. Today we can contact anyone in the world with just one click. Just send an e-mail and we cannot wait one week for a reply. We demand it now. How much time have we saved now that e-mail is there? You can reach anyone in the world with a phone call now and the money that you have to pay for calling is reducing day by day. But we take it for granted. We demand that over loved ones call us as frequently as they can even if they don't have anything special to say. We send messages, pictures post on facebook that you just cut your fingers, show every aspect of our life to the whole world. The more we try to save the time, the more we use it up.

But we are the slaves of consumerism not just because we want it. Of course we want it but we mainly want to impress others. We buy an expensive phone and it is a status symbol. We buy a sports car, not just because we want to go from point A to point B. But because we want to go from A to B while revving the engine and showing off our non-existent purchasing power to the 'important' people on the road. That feeling that we get when someone looks at our personal 'junk' in wonder or condemn or jealousy, that's what drives our consumerism.

So it ties up perfectly with the previous topic. 'Money'. Our consumerist wishes are various. Technologically savvy, petrol-heads, Gamers, land owners, everyone has something that they wish to own. Even an environmentalist wishes to own an expensive new Tesla model S, even when producing that new car has more carbon emission than using a second hand car that runs on petrol. Our consumerism drives us to make more money. Life improves dramatically when the pursuit of consumerism is removed.