I’ve been to the newsstand, so watch out. I picked up one of my favorite magazines, Abusters, The Journal of the Mental Environment, this weekend and was ashamed to see how applicable the articles are to my lifestyle. They shed light on my superficiality, my materialism and my value system. This month’s edition of Adbusters discusses consumption. The staff and writers contributing to this magazine discuss the effect that mass spending has-not only on the environment but also the mindset of people in general.
In the western world, the checkbook is perhaps the best measure of happiness, and we, therefore, kill ourselves to have the fattest pocketbook, the hippest clothes, the best music, toys, cars and shoes because they make us happy. They give us a sense of worth, a dollar value.
All of this is well and good, but really, is it not just a bunch of idealistic hoopla? Of course I spend money; I am a middle-class spoiled kid from the heartland of America. I want nothing. I need nothing. Consequently, I buy as much as I possibly can and rack up bounced check charges and credit card bills. Who’s it really hurting?
My economy needs me to overspend to keep people in the private sector employed. The huge amount of trash that I produce every year creates environmental hazards and gives hippies a reason to protest. Everyone benefits.
I hold conversations based on the money I spend, the music I hear, what I wear and all of the cool things that I have gotten in the past year or two. I know what’s up, and I have the CD collection to prove it. What’s wrong with this?
It is an empty lifestyle. I have made the grave mistake of thinking that the people who like the same things as me will like me as well. If so-and-so has the same possessions that I have, then they are supposed to have the same ideals that I have. It’s like an equation-CD + Movie = Person.
Oh, the disillusionment that follows this ridiculous assumption.
This is what we get for being materialistic. We base our relationships and lives on the things that we like and “have in common.” One day we wake up. People who we don’t know surround us. They may look like us, use the same jargon, but we may not even like them.
Maybe there is a middle ground in here somewhere. Maybe there is a place where the material world and the spiritual world can meet, but I don’t know where it is.
I often find myself stumped in conversations. I often have no clue of what I believe and what I feel. I know very little about love, honesty and relationships that aren’t contingent upon common interests and spending habits.
People, too, have become commodities. In this money-loving state we lose our identities to the market at large. Maybe it is appropriate that we live shallow lives and base ourselves on our closets, but I’m inclined to think that there must be more to life than this.
We let things own us. We love things and use people. But there is a higher ground, and the first step to reaching that place requires that we give our comparative minds a rest. It’s time to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses and start asking them what they think and how they feel.
Joy Murphy is a senior English major.