Precision-targeted marketing has reached creepy new heights. The next step in consumerism!

Jake Reilly’s ‘Amish Project:’ 90 Days Without a Cell Phone, Email and Social Media

This! A million times, this!

I dropped off facebook for over 3 months last fall, and it was really eye-opening. I had way more time on my hands. While not nearly as extreme, I had to find new ways of communicating with my friends and family. I started sending emails, letters, texts, and phone calls as a way of keeping in touch. I found I like calling people more than texting.

I feel like we’ve lost something as a society as we’ve become more and more reliant on constant technological access. Suddenly, we know stupid details of near-strangers’ lives, but we don’t know how to make small talk on the phone. As Jake said, we make plans to see each other in person, but then spend that time attached to our individual gadgets. We’re always connected, but it seems like no one knows how to personally connect anymore.

(And, yes, I recognize the irony of sharing this on social media sites like tumblr, fb, and twitter.)

Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness, possesses you.

—Mildred Lisette Norman (via staceyjoy)

The above quote is from a news article “Nearly 40 percent of Europeans suffer mental illness” (linked). While the research covers a huge spectrum of mental and neurological disorders, many of which require ongoing medical supervision, I would like to focus on the statistic about depression.

A reader might chalk it up to the excuse that the rising number is the result of more frequent diagnosis, or even over-diagnosis. And in some respects, that might be true. More people are being diagnosed as depressed. But why? 

Are people in Western countries more depressed than ever before?

I think the answer is Yes. It might be easy to point to the recent economic downturn and global financial crises a as major source of stress and malaise, but that only looks at the symptoms. There is a big-picture disease behind our recent economic woes: a Western global trend, following America’s example, of excessive consumerism and marketing. 

If you haven’t watched The Story of Stuff* yet, now would be an excellent time. 

Ms. Leonard succinctly lays out how the mining-production-consumption-disposal chain works, but for my purposes I’m focusing on the part that begins after 10:10 on consumerism and marketing. 

She uses a chilling 1955 quotation from retailing analyst Victor Lebow:

“Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

She goes on to say around the 15:15 mark exactly what I’m getting at: “What’s the point of an ad, except to make us unhappy with what we have?” People (i.e. consumers) intentionally have been trapped in a loop of consumption-planned & perceived obsolescence-disposal-consumption that’s whole purpose is to make us miserable so we’ll buy more stuff.  

So why are people more depressed than ever? Probably because we’ve been tricked by marketing into thinking we need things we don’t! But we don’t realize it!

Most people can’t see that the drive to have the next “great” item is making them miserable. They can’t seem to put their finger on it, but they’ve been duped into thinking that they need something, so they either go into debt buying it, work hard to earn the money for it, or pine away for it. Then once they have it, they find that the satisfaction is only fleeting. Maybe the thing breaks (planned obsolescence) or the next ”great” new thing comes out (perceived obsolescence), and suddenly this once-coveted object doesn’t provide happiness anymore. In fact, it might even be a source of unhappiness, since now it is taking up space or needs to be discarded.

Why else might people be unhappy? 

Perhaps because they are working more (if they’re lucky enough to be working at all) in unfulfilling jobs in order to earn money to buy stuff they’ve been tricked into wanting. Or because they’re working some of those retail or service jobs that pay minimum wage and don’t offer benefits, so they struggle to make ends meet and still covet those needless things that are marketed to them 3000 times a day on average.

Do you see the connections? Wanting stuff we don’t need leads to unhappiness. Marketing is how corporations have made us perpetually unhappy so that we will buy more things to try to become happy. Then they make us unhappy with those things so we’ll buy more useless things. It’s a cycle that we can’t win because it’s designed by casino rules. 

So how can we start to become happier? By breaking the cycle. 

Remove marking and temptation wherever possible.

Stop purchasing things that are designed to be obsolete - look for quality products and styles that are classics rather than trends. 

Quit the job that is unfulfilling. If you are keeping it just because it offers benefits like healthcare, look for a new job and become an advocate for healthcare alternatives and reform. 

We shouldn’t let ourselves continue to be depressed when the depression is created as a marketing ploy. We can find happiness in simpler pleasures, enjoying our work and feeling satisfied in the daily accomplishments that provide for our own well-being (e.g. growing food, connecting with nature, exploring low-impact lifestyles, etc.) if only we make a conscious decision to remove ourselves from consumerism one day at a time.

Think about it: before the consumption-driven economics of the latter half of the 20th century came to be, people lived simpler lives - some farmed, some worked in services or trades. They didn’t have office jobs. They worked to provide for themselves and their families. They grew food, made things they needed, and generally were content. 

The truth is that Western views may never change in my lifetime, and I may never escape the cycle altogether, but I can try to make a difference in my life and the environment around me. I can change for myself. We can elect not to be driven to despair by a system that wants us that way and thrives because of it.

 *The Story of Stuff Project released Ms. Leonard’s annotated script, including references to her bibliographical sources, for those wondering about the facts and statistics presented.

Here’s a great counter-article for anyone who enjoyed my Downsizing Relationships post.