The Amazon Echo packaging boasts that Alexa is happy to help. Would you like to help us in what way? What can Alexa help us with?
It can help us become what we become. Because our waking life is more and more like a never-ending all-you-can-eat buffet. Consumables include movies, books, music and other things – with Amazon Prime, Spotify Premium, Netflix and YouTube, among others, providing us with an endless hodgepodge of consumption. There is a lot of content and free with a paid subscription which makes it hard not to binge watch which is just the newest form of our binge buying and binge consuming.
A few years ago, an article in Costco’s lifestyle magazine offered a remedy for the negative effects of summer time on our mood and health: “New clothes can give you a pleasant feeling of happiness in November (even in spring). during the whole year).”
Amazon and Costco and Apple and everyone else today aren’t just marketing goods and services; they promise, half jokingly, half seriously, that somehow they can deliver something else: happiness. “Go premium. Be happy, ”says Spotify. And although we know that it is at best a joke or, at worst, a lie, we let ourselves be convinced and then always fall short of luck.
The belief that the satisfaction of needs through consumable goods and services will fill us and make us happy is called consumerism. The most obvious problem is that consumables can temporarily evoke positive emotions, but a happy life is not one of episodic heights; Consumerism leads us to a superficial look at happiness. Another is that consumerism is not interested in satisfying limited needs, but needs that are unlimited and therefore cannot be satisfied. Or rather, consumption converts desires into needs; it turns the latest gadget into a terrible necessity rather than an adorable luxury. Another reason is that today’s emotional highs automatically become tomorrow’s emotional lows: what is excitingly innovative quickly becomes frustratingly out of date, and the vicious cycle of emotional highs and lows continues. After all, the act of consumption is fleeting. But we are not. We need deeper sources of meaning to sustain our lives, because while creativity fills us, consumption empties us.
The real question is, why do we pretend the false promises of consumption are true when we all know they are not? And the answer, in my opinion, is that consumption plays with four human weaknesses.
First, it kindles our natural appetite for luxury rather than curbing it. We are all affected by the dragon disease and we desire precious, rare and sweet things. Second, rather than curbing, it exacerbates our natural desire to have more than others. We don’t want to keep up with the Joneses; we want more than anyone else. Third, it makes us want more now and not less over time, which leads to an irrational preference for quantity over quality, present enjoyment over long-term satisfaction. Fourth, it takes advantage of our aversion to exertion by making consumption quite convenient, a mere push of a button (or even the lack of a push of a button when the next episode starts automatically).
The fact is, despite these natural weaknesses, we don’t need to indulge in consumerism. The classic cardinal virtues can be our best defense. First, moderation is the ability to sort needs and wants while remaining aware that happiness is not found by confusing them. Second, justice gives us the perspective to see the absurdity of competition for external goods when the really important goods are internal; Here the competition is not with others, but with ourselves as we strive to become the best person we can be. Third, prudence counteracts the illusion that the present enjoyment of many things is superior to the long-term enjoyment of a few, more permanent things; it tastes the lasting and fulfilling instead of the fleeting and disappointing. Fourth, courage turns the logic of comfort on its head by provoking us to fight for the more arduous but important goods.
It is true that consumer goods are often harmless pleasures, but they are not the substance of life. See the hearth fire and the tasty meals that family and friends are arranging; in the celebrations of a lived and celebrated life, in the encounter with the worries and joys of our companions, in the effort of making and doing, in talking about the really important things, there we will find a life that lives, a life lived by creating and receiving works of love.
The appeal of consumerism should not be underestimated: it will easily supplant the true sources of human happiness. Let’s say moderately, just, prudently and courageously: “Smile, Alexa, but I’m not doing it for you.”
Chad Engelland is the Chair of the University of Dallas Arts Faculty. He is the author of several books, most recently phenomenology (MIT Press, 2020).
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