Consumerism and Rationalization in American Society
Consumption, the act of spending money on goods and services, is an inevitable and essential part of the human experience due to the simple fact that people must consume in order to live. Since the 1920s, when consumerism became a “mass phenomenon” (Schor 1998: 217) surpassing race, class, and other such borders to fully encompass all of America, consumption has become more than an issue of survival. People, in effect, no longer consume to live, but live to consume. The focus of our society has shifted from that of keeping up with the Joneses to surpassing the Joneses, by “continually comparing our own lifestyle and possessions to those of a select group of people we respect and want to be like” (p. 3).
Rationality no doubt holds some blame for our current consumer society. Weber’s Theory of Rationality contends that “the search by people for the optimum means to a given end is shaped by rules, regulations, and larger social structures” (Ritzer 2000: 23); in applying this theory to the new consumerism, it becomes clear that people are looking to fulfill their desires through consumption. Objects are no longer just things; they have become vehicles through which people may achieve their dreams, whether they dream of social status, prestige, respect, or desirability.
Reinforcing the idea of achievement through consumption, the media advertises products in such a way to convince people that they too can be successful, attractive, and popular as long as they can afford to pay for it. By purchasing the right kind of shoes, clothes, cars, homes, furniture, beverages, and even food, “we [as a society] are shelling out billions for status” (Schor, p. 61). Consumer goods “provide an opportunity for people to express themselves, display their identities, or create a public persona” (p. 57), which may explain why people hold objects and the attainment these objects so dear. Surely our own shallow preoccupation with appearances is partially to blame for this, but one can also argue that American society has been forced into this potentially detrimental lifestyle through the evils of rationality. Due to our constant bombardment with media images and subjection to catch phrases encouraging us to always be one step ahead of the next guy or else get left behind, “[rationality] allows individuals little choice of means to ends” (Ritzer, p. 23). We either consume or be consumed in the rising tide of rationality.
A study in 1986 found that its respondents could “look at a person depicted in front of a house and tell his or her occupational status by the type of house” (Schor, p. 35-36), which demonstrates how regularly people study and judge one another by the consumer signals they send out. Historically in America, people were persecuted for allegedly being witches or communists; now people are persecuted for wearing designer knock-offs or drinking generic coffee. Indeed, as Kowinski states (p. 7), America’s is a consumer religion and shopping malls are our cathedrals of consumption. We express what we regard as holy every time we lay down our cash, checks, and credit cards to buy things we don’t truly need: the almighty power of the dollar, whose influence and esteem knows no bounds.
Applying the principle of rationality to our current economic market, a pair of brand name sneakers may be produced both efficiently and predictably under controlled circumstances, but it will never seem particularly rational to charge $150 for a pair of sneakers that Nike only pays its Vietnamese women workers $1.60 per day (Schor, p. 154) to produce in the factories. Herein lies the paradoxical irrationality of rationality. We are taught throughout life that it is important to be rational individuals in order to be efficient, predictable, and controlled. People then, in a sense, are as manufactured as the goods that they consume. Sooner or later, however, it becomes impossible to consistently and constantly be rational in a world which is infinitely irrational.
Further irrationalities exist in regards to how Americans perceive the effects of consumerism on their lives. America’s favorite defense mechanism, denial, comes into action; “we spend more than we realize, hold more debt than we admit to, and ignore many of the moral conflicts surrounding our acquisitions” (p. 83). Not many people bother to keep careful track of how much they charge to their credit cards or how often they withdraw from ATMs, perhaps because using a plastic card to pay for something seems less real or concrete than using actual paper money. Even though it is completely illogical, I am more likely to engage in frivolous consumption when I have my credit card with me, so I tend to leave it in my room when I go out. The irony of the situation is that I allegedly only have a credit card for emergencies, but the “emergencies” in my life are really just things that I want and can not afford. I am in fact convinced that when I really do have an emergency, I won’t even have the card with me. Obtaining my credit card started out as an entirely rational plan and has become completely irrational.
Perhaps this explains why Americans still feel dissatisfied, pessimistic, anxious, and deprived, despite the fact that we are acquiring “at a greater rate than any previous generation of the middle class” (p. 11-12). I recognize these feelings as my own, because I realize that no matter how much I consume, there will always be something else that I will want and not be able to have. Much as Schor (p. 12) writes, I am “apparently more concerned with what [I] could not afford than what [I] already had,” even though I recognize, superficially, that material objects will not bring me any long-term happiness. Because of the bigger / faster / newer / shinier is better mentality generally present in American society, it seems plausible that I have been conditioned to want and honestly feel as though I need and deserve yet another pair of shoes, for example, even though I already own an excess of shoes, all in fine condition.
“Over-spending is how ordinary Americans cope with the everyday pressures of the new consumerism” (p. 21), and I am no exception. I worked full-time during my senior year of high school in order to save money for college, but I ended up buying things I didn’t actually need, spending a lot of money going out with my friends and illegally buying cigarettes. In retrospect, I realize I should have saved far more than I did, but at the time I felt my expenditures were perfectly legitimate, perhaps because “commercialism has lessened pain” (Twitched 2000: 284). I had an easier time coping with exhaustion from school and work when I could afford to consume whatever I desired; however, this effectively rendered me “enmeshed in a cycle of work and spend” (Schor, 99).
Because materialism is “the central characteristic of modern life” (Twitched, 281), I was more likely to spend the money I earned and neglect my savings account, because although I did not really feel that I owned the money that I kept in the bank, I was more than aware that the money in my pocket belonged to me. Material goods seem more real just because they are more visible than the digits in bank accounts, and for this reason, Americans “[skimp] on invisibles such as insurance, college funds, and retirement savings as the visible commodities somehow become indispensable” (Schor, 108). In part due to our need to quantify and thus rationalize everything, the number of goods that we posses or can potentially posses becomes more important than those necessities that we can not see but are essential just the same. Perhaps society is well on its way to becoming “nothing more than a seamless web of rational structures” (Ritzer, 25), as we move “from one rational structure to another – from rationalized educational institutions to rationalized workplaces, from rationalized recreational settings to rationalized homes.”
Children, too, perpetuate consumerism and materialism in American society. It is not unusual for children or teenagers to act as “agents of materialism” (Schor, 87) by pouting to their parents regarding some item that they can not possibly live a fulfilling life without. Furthermore, parents often feel as though they are under pressure to keep the image of their children up to certain standards, especially once children are old enough to be in school. No doubt a reflecting the cultural values they have learned from their parents, children are just as critical and judgmental of each other, if not more so, than adults are. “The overall cultural message we receive is complex, contradictory, and subtle … as adults, we have not ceased to care about where we rank, but we are socialized not to talk about it” (Schor, 94).
Part of the problem with a society which is so attuned with image is that we often tend to get carried away with illusions and refuse to see the reality of our given situation. The costs of our consumerism culture extend far beyond just the financial costs of consumption to the emotional costs of striving for an illusion, including increased stress, tension, and dissatisfaction with overall lifestyle. People can not help but be dissatisfied by the falseness of their surroundings when everything is rationalized. The entire world seems to be leaning towards a one-size-fits-all mentality towards consumerism and rationalization, which is obviously neither realistic nor sensible, and therefore puts a great deal of pressure on everyone. In a sense, everyone is starving and the world is our all-you-can-eat consumption buffet, but all it would take to get these issues under control is “a creative and aesthetic balance between poverty and excess” (Elgin 2000: 399) in which we as a society would begin to “maintain a skillful balance between the inner and outer aspects of our lives” (p. 398).
