A gourmand is a person who delights in eating and drinking excessively. The delight is not so much in the fine tastes, but rather in the gross amounts. We Americans are painfully aware of this trait. For all the diet industry’s efforts, our per capita weight increase continues to climb. And this gourmandizing has become the signature characteristic of our culture. It has been, in fact, the metaphor of our lifestyle.
Everything about us is more for the sake of more. Think of the fast food advertising. You can supersize any meal. You can buy soft drinks in half-gallon sizes. Clothing is buy one, get one free. Groceries are buy 2 get the third one free. And we are told that wanting more expresses our constitutional freedom. That makes wanting more a distinction of appropriate citizenship. Wanting and having more, therefore, is the ultimate demonstration of one’s patriotism.
But then, of course, somewhere along the line we must think of paying for it. And not paying for it is how we got to the place we’re in now. We can point the finger of blame all the way round the compass—credit card companies, various media formats (especially those that combine database formation and facilitate database mining), advertising exploitation of all these—but the devil is in us. All these agencies of exploitation have been doing this for a long time, so much so that we have become a then-some culture. That is, “We’ll have that and then some.”
The fact is that consumers will draw down their consumption, when and if they think it will provide a temporary remedy for the pain they’re suffering (i.e., bankruptcy, credit card trauma, foreclosure, overdrawn equity on property, etc.). Apparently this is already going on. The spending spree is ending suddenly. That in my view is a good thing. But notice how our culture views this. “Nobody doubts that families need to start saving more than they saved over the last two decades. But if they change their behavior too quickly, it could be very painful…If the consumer slump continues, there is a potential for a dangerous feedback loop, in which spending cuts and layoffs reinforce each other.” In other words, we must consume our way out of this downward helix, or things will get much worse. But if you have much less to spend, and the current financial crisis has taught you that over indulging on credit is the cause of the crisis, what can you do?
My answer is to de-gourmandize. We need a cultural retro-fit of how we distinguish need from want. I also think we make a mistake if we inveigh against the capitalist manipulators and exploiters. We should recognize that they are exploiting and manipulating our own gluttonous zeitgeist. We actually believe that we are deserving of everything we want. If we were to begin with an exorcism of that singular delusion, our society would immediately move in a more civilized direction. Think of it: Veteran’s Day might have its original intention restored, rather than merely being an excuse to take advantage of break out sales of overstocked merchandise by managers who don’t know their jobs. And so on. I’m not saying stop buying. I’m saying use your common sense—don’t buy yourself and the rest of US into a deeper hole.
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3 comments:
I spend many hours a week attending meetings with people like me who are recovering from "excesses" (in this case, drug and alcohol addictions) I often hear the phrase "my drug of choice is MORE." More alcohol, more drugs, more food, more STUFF. It is a debilitating state, to be bogged down by too much of a thing, no matter what that thing is. I wonder how much sweeter life would be if I could say truthfully "My drug of choice is LESS." I know one thing, from the experience of raising children. Less engenders gratitude. A kid has a hundred dolls... they aren't special. How can they be? There's a hundred of them. Maybe they were special for that one moment of instant gratification, which may or may not last the distance of the car ride home. But a kid has one doll... just one? How special is that doll? And for how long? Maybe less really is more.
Okay, are we all born gourmands or does the society we live in play a role in making us that way? The engine that drives capitalism is growth or, more specicially, MORE. So if we want a "healthy" economy, we need to consume. We need MORE. But at what cost? I live in a bigger house than my father and drive a faster car. But we are a two parent working household and we work 10 hour days. The quest for MORE turns out to be a sham. The problem is, natural resources are finite, and when we run out of them, there cannot be MORE. But here we are trying to stimulate the economy... as cakelet probably understands, we're in some major freaking denial here. Capitalism is dead, but it'll be another half century before anyone actually realizes it.
Thanks cakelet for the doll example. I had in mind proposing that we might experiment this holiday season with the idea of giving our kids and grandkids only the 2 gifts that they really, really want. As I have watched them each gift giving time, I see that they race through the mountain of packages, toss them here and there, and then pick one or two that they really like.
And max, I don't know if capitalism is dying, but it's certainly being altered by societies that are experimenting with more moderate versions of it (e.g., Vietnam and China). You seem to agree that we must follow this current collapse with a fairly radical paradigm shift in our core values, or something more dire could follow. Other empires have had to face this with varying degrees of success (e.g., England, Netherlands, France, Spain). We might begin by studying how we really feel about American "exceptionalism."
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