Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 23. januar 2013 / Time Line January 23, 2013
Version 3.522. Januar 2013, 24. Januar 2013
01/23/2013
Using Material Goods For Social Competition
By John Scales Avery
There is something ethically wrong with using material goods for
the purpose of social competition at a time when excessive
consumption is destroying our planet. Also, in our century, the
world's rescources are nearing exhaustion, and roughly 40,000
children die every day from starvation or from poverty-related
diseases..
The whole structure of western society seems designed to push its
citizens towards ever-increasing levels of consumption. The mass
media hold before us continually the ideal of a personal utopia
filled with material goods. Every young man in a modern industrial
society feels that he is a failure unless he fights his way to the
“top”; and in recent years, women too have been drawn
into this competition.
Of course not everyone can reach the top; there would not be room
for everyone; but society urges all us to try, and we feel a sense
of failure if we do not reach the goal. Thus, modern life has
become a struggle of all against all for power and possessions.
One of the central problems in reducing consumption is that in our
present economic and social theory, consumption has no upper bound;
there is no definition of what is enough; there is no concept of a
state where all of the real needs of a person have been satisfied.
In our growth-oriented present-day economics, it is assumed that,
no matter how much a person earns, he or she is always driven by a
desire for more.
The phrase “conspicuous consumption” was invented by
the Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) in
order to describe the way in which our society uses economic waste
as a symbol of social status. In “The Theory of the Leisure
Class”, first published in 1899, Veblen pointed out that it
wrong to believe that human economic behavior is rational, or that
it can be understood in terms of classical economic theory. To
understand it, Veblen maintained, one might better make use of
insights gained from anthropology, psychology, sociology, and
history.
The sensation caused by the publication of Veblen’s book, and
the fact that his phrase, “conspicuous consumption”,
has become part of our language, indicate that his theory did not
completely miss its mark. In fact, modern advertisers seem to be
following Veblen’s advice: Realizing that much of the output
of our economy will be used for the purpose of establishing the
social status of consumers, advertising agencies hire psychologists
to appeal to the consumer’s longing for a higher social
position.
When possessions are used for the purpose of social competition,
demand has no natural upper limit; it is then limited only by the
size of the human ego, which, as we know, is boundless. This would
be all to the good if unlimited economic growth were desirable. But
today, when further industrial growth implies future collapse,
western society urgently needs to find new values to replace our
worship of power, our restless chase after excitement, and our
admiration of excessive consumption.
Some voices from the past can help us to find the values that we
need as we try to change to a more modest and sustainable way of
living. Let us listen to the voice of Mahatma Gandhi: “There
is enough for every man's need”, he said, “but not for
every man's greed”. Gandhi deliberately adopted very simple
clothing, and he reduced his possessions to an absolute minimum, in
order to demonstrate that there is no link between material
possessions and personal merit.
The voice of Henry David Thoreau is also a useful and wise one.
“Most of the luxuries”, Thoreau wrote, “and many
of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable,
but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect
to luxuries, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager
life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo,
Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in
outward riches, none so rich in inward.”
In the New Testament, we can read among the eight beatitudes,
“Blessed are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven”, and “Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth”. Or in Mathew 19-24, “It is easier
for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich
person to enter the Kingdom of God”. Saint Francis of Assisi
was born into a rich family, but he gave away his possessions
because he thought that a simple life was a better one.
The Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope was said to have been
visited by Alexander the Great, who asked him, “Is there
anything that I can do for you?” “Yes”, Diogenes
replied, “Would you please move a little to the side, so that
the sunshine will fall on me once again.”
Of course, Diogenes and the others were exaggerating a little for
the sake of clarity, but the message is clear enough and true
enough: There is a limit to what we really need, and beyond that,
material possessions do not really make us happier.
Using material goods for the purpose of social competition is a bit
like an upward-escalating arms race. No matter how much we have, we
need to get more to keep up with the competition. As with the arms
race, we need to break the escalating spiral before it destroys
us.
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