…so then what?

OK. So obsessive-compulsive consumption now has a name. Now what? I’m the practical student; continually looking for ways to apply knowledge. I can now communicate the feeling of dread that comes with the act of mindlessly consuming. But what do I do with this? In retrospect, my intuition worked well for me but there are still a lot of lessons to be learned. J.B. Schor is an academic after my own heart. She writes of Diderot, a French philosopher who struggled with autoconsumption in the following way:

He receives a gorgeous dressing gown as a gift that, when compared with his old dressing gown and subsequently all his other possessions, makes everything seem shabby. He plunges into a downward spiral of replacement. First a chair, then his desk, then x, y, z… until finally he finds himself unhappy and in debt. He becomes a slave to and perpetuates an endless cycle of consumption. As I already mentioned, I’ve been there. Fortunately not to the same extent but I do cringe when I think about just how much time I spent going shopping.

How to break out of this incredibly costly, wasteful and pointless habit? Schor presents us with nine principles (if this is reminiscent of AA, get over the fact that the comparison is unsavoury; an addiction is an addiction).

1. Develop a relationship with the things you have. If you saved up for something or held off until you accomplished something and decided to treat yourself, you’re more likely to have an attachment to the item than fleeting “Gimme. I want. OK. I bought, now what?” moments. Buying fewer better quality things also helps control desire.

2. Reduce the amount of power objects have. Hopefully people don’t like you because you have the full suite of Apple products. Anyway, I certainly judge people poorly when one of the first things I know about them is the stuff they have.

3. Simply spend less money buying things and thus making life more complicated than it needs to be. I have huge respect for people who live simply and are genuinely happy. I doubt I’m the only one.

4. SHARE YOUR THINGS. Do you have friends? Neighbours? Roommates? Do all of you need to have a mixer? How often do you bake anyway?

5. Deconstruct advertising. How many products go into that thing anyway? How much do each of those things cost? How was that thing produced?

6. Avoid retail therapy. My friend told me last night about a brilliant Norwegian writer (who’s name currently escapes me…too much wine) who screamed at rocks and then buried them. Fucking brilliant. Who doesn’t love a good scream now and then? Or a good cry. Or writing it out of you. Or venting.

7. De-commercialize rituals. I stopped buying Christmas presents four years ago. My mom still hates the fact that I don’t but the rest of my family respects my decision. I enjoy the ritual of seeing them and not after stressing about figuring out what to buy them before I see them.

8. Work less and have more fun. If you’re buying less, you’re spending less. Usually meaning you can work less, leaving much more time to do fun things.

9. I’m a little cynical about this last one but it’s important nonetheless. Schor rightly asserts that we need to hold government more accountable for the things its responsible for: the well-being of citizens. Read: not just the economy. Not just the economy. Not just the economy. NOT JUST THE ECONOMY! Life is about so much more than money and work and things. You know this and you think this often. So say or do something when you’re not being represented.

Autoconsumption

For most of human history (aside from the very rich; always exceptions to the rule), consumption was largely instrumental: people produced, crafted, traded, bought things for an item’s functional purpose. Aesthetics and “how good” the thing made the owner feel was, for the most part, secondary, or inconsequential. I think by this (early) point you know where I’m going with this post. You’re bombarded, as I am, on a daily basis by images and messages and (*shudder* post-modernism’s) symbols telling you THIS no THAT no THIS!!! will make you just a bit happier. The problem is that, as everyone has experienced for herself, this is never the case. Or is only fleetingly so. Those sexy red pumps you bought to give a splash of daring and colour to that intentionally plain/monochromatic outfit genuinely did provide a moment of ecstasy. Especially when you brought them home and threw on some matching red lipstick to check out your new look. But what happened after the début of your new outfit? Those shiny red pumps lost a bit of that lustre. Right? And you’re now searching for the next statement piece for your wardrobe.

Believe me, I’ve been a clotheshorse and by no means is my current closet a collection of rags. But even before beginning Hal’s consumption course, I realized just how much of my money (and subsequently, life) was being spent on looking cute. I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with wanting to look good. My general feeling toward living is that you should simply enjoy yourself. Enjoy what you do, enjoy the people you spend time with and work hard at the job you love doing in order to perpetuate the cycle of enjoyment. Hedonistic? Perhaps. But it’s working out well for me so far.

But there was something that just felt wrong about the amount of time and money I was spending on buying clothes. Doing activities you enjoy doing should make you feel good, no? The constant shopping, however, was not making me feel good in any substantial or sustained way. So, I simply stopped going shopping so often. I’m sure I had thoughts about this as my habits slowly changed but I didn’t think about the whys in any thorough way.

Looking back on this now, with the last couple of lectures slowly arranging themselves in my mind, I can give a theory on why it felt wrong to continue shopping as much as I was: autoconsumption. The concept of consumption for its own sake; consuming for the sake of consuming. Not for pleasure, not for functionality but to consume. If you really think about this, it’s a creepy/scary thought – not knowing or having any particular reason for doing something other than to perpetuate the action of it. I would even describe it as dreadful in the Kirkegaardian sense (i.e. unfocused fear). What’s more, happiness researchers (yes, they do exist and their work is incredibly important) the world over are finding no connection between increased consumption and increased happiness and wellbeing. While it is true that the rich are generally happier than the very poor, those who mostly or singularly strive to make more money and accumulate more things are not happier than the poor.

There are many aspects to this line of research I find very interesting but I’ll write about just one more. The connection between consumption and emotion. Marketers and advertisers have become more efficient anthropologists than academic anthropologists. It’s not just the fact that a person is bombarded by a large volume of advertising that makes it so effective; it’s the ways in which ads make us feel. When you watch ads on TV or look at magazine spreads or posters at the subway station, how often does the ad reflect the functionality of the product? Never? Or almost never? Instead, we’re shown images of “this is how you could look”; “this is what you could be doing”; “this is how you could feel”… Except that you never look, act or feel in the ways the ad promised.

So I’m not going to stop buying clothing I like (though certainly I will continue buying mindfully and less frequently) and I’m not suggesting you’re all mindless sheep who have no agency. I guess I just find these new perspectives on consumption incredibly thought-provoking as well as very important for all of us. After all, as Hal put it, we wouldn’t need to study consumption if it weren’t such a destructive activity. Consumption in itself is not a bad thing – in fact, it’s necessary for survival and for pleasure. But we’re long past the point of overconsuming and this is one of the most destructive of all the destructive human activities. It’s destructive to other people (in the form of cheap labour and unjust labour practices and inequality of distribution of goods) and it’s destructive to our collective home.

I’ll end this here before the point of horrible cliché.

Inspiration. Trepidation.

A lot has happened in the past two months that has both inspired and caused bouts of fist shaking toward the world. But the inspired has by far outshone the dreadful.

Dearly loved friends were visiting and visited, new friendships cultivated, a new and unexpected project revealed itself, a thought-provoking semester ended and a new one began. The holidays, with the many interactions I participated in, as well as observed, were stunning. Previously separated worlds collided, causing just a bit of curiousness as to how all would get along. Or not. But silly me, these are all people I love. How could they help but love each other? Yeah, there’s more than a bit of smugness in that statement.

Last semester was quite successful academically, with the exception of my bewilderingly difficult introduction Norwegian course… I suppose I should be grateful I did well enough to continue with it. And I will persevere and learn it! For myself and because this place is becoming, more and more, “home”.

I have started working with fantastic coffee people in Oslo very recently and am still wondering how it is that there’s such perfect synchrony between work and study. Very simply, the purpose of my work (the name is still up in the air until a fitting one is found) is to build a community of roasters and coffee producers who are working toward a transparent, equitable and sustainable model of coffee trade. As the coffee chain has many layers, it can be difficult to bring all parties together but if the industry weren’t lofty and overambitious, we would all still be drinking (or not at all, in my case) poorly roasted and highly altered coffee that we paid insultingly little for. I’m not interested in categorizing this within a box – prevailing or newly defined. I just feel privileged, albeit a touch overwhelmed, that I get to participate in it.

So that’s a large part of the inspiring. The trepidation comes from all the uninspired happening in the world. Especially in beloved Canada. Why, in such an amazing, beautiful, diverse place, filled with pockets of inspired and inspiring people, is the country increasingly allowing a few to petulantly raise its middle-finger to the rest of the world? How else to describe one of the most shockingly embarrassing examples of this: the Harper government not only withdrawing from Kyoto but also playing smarmy uncle wagging his finger at others who naïvely continue to participate.

It’ll be a great but challenging year. My mind was blown during week one of my consumption class by Hal, who is steadily becoming my favourite lecturer. Everyone has an intellectual crush on Hal. Most often in academia, one is presented with recycled thoughts, debates, descriptions of the same phenomena. But this week, I encountered a concept that I had truly never come across before and it forced me to pause and wonder. And also cringe.

Daniel Miller writes about anthropology’s role in the study of consumption. In one of the two papers I read this past week, he presents the idea that it is not politicians nor even TNCs that control the world markets. Housewives do. The aggregate of daily purchases made worldwide by housewives is enormously large and influential on supply and demand, which leads to two crucial consequences: 1. Perpetuation of inequality and poverty stemming from this group’s choice to buy cheap goods and 2. Maintenance of patriarchal control (This one is quite a bit more complicated, so I’ll do my best to explain). These two consequences are mutually reinforcing – women are the lower wage earners, are still less educated in much of the world (though this is slowly changing) and are mostly in unequal relationships. Even though their actions are the ones that change markets on the ground, they are not the ones voting and participating in politics. Thus their voices remain unheard or are ignored. Yes, this is changing in the North and in pockets of the South but the pace is glacial.

To wrap up, I am grateful and happy to be a part of the segment of the coffee industry I have spent the last four years in. It represents a miniscule proportion of the overall industry and it’s not perfect but I’ve honestly yet to meet a person in it that is in it to prosper and subsequently gain at the expense of others. The motivation to always aspire for excellence and to overcome previous distance and barriers between the various participants leads to a built-in mechanism for transparency and equity. Again, the industry isn’t perfect, which is why I’ve chosen to study it as well as participate in it. The point is that it’s very possible to make consuming/political choices that allow for pure enjoyment of life while not harming, or perhaps even benefitting others concerned.