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Consumerism,
Triviality and Obsolescence It is difficult to accept that our income could be sufficient and that our feeling that we do not have enough comes from our failure to use the available resources well, rather than from our need for more.
Lewis Mumford • The mechanical expansion of human appetites, the appetite for goods, the appetite for power, the appetite for sensation, has no relation whatever to the ordering of the means of existence for the satisfaction of human needs.
N.J.Berrill • There is a limit to bigness, a limit to speed, a limit to numbers and a limit to complexity &endash; not theoretically, which is in the realm of imagination, but practically in the sense that beyond a certain limit the penalty for further advance is greater than the advantage. And it is this general condition that we are rapidly approaching.
Lewis Mumford • If we have only trash and trivialities to sell, we must produce trashy and trivial personalities to serve as consumers. Our apparatus of education, advertisement and propaganda as developed under capitalism, exists to produce such monsters.
J.K.Galbraith • If the individual's wants are to be urgent, they must be original with himself. They cannot be urgent if they must be contrived for him. And above all, they must not be contrived by the process of production by which they are satisfied. For this means that the whole case for the urgency of production, based on the urgency of wants, falls to the ground. One cannot defend production as satisfying wants if that production creates the wants.
Truly 'human' leisure-time goods and 'social' leisure services must attempt to overcome the increasing isolation of the population, which was associated with most commercial (prefabricated) leisure products up until now. In the future, leisure offers should also promote personal initiative, creative action and joint activities. ... Currently, no escape from total leisure consumption can be seen. One fears the loss of social status symbols and thus the limitation of one's personal enjoyment. The results would be isolation and loneliness, but also boredom and satiety because one couldn't fill the emptiness on his own. The personal reactions are respectively negative and defensive. The realization of one's own inadequacy, being responsible for one's actions, produces uneasiness. Very few people are in a position to free themselves from the dependency on consumption.
J.K.Galbraith • The weakness, as well as the ultimate defence, lies with the theory of consumer demand.
The theory of consumer demand, as is now widely accepted, is based on two broad propositions, neither of them quite explicit but both extremely important for the present value system of economists. The first is that the urgency of wants does not diminish appreciably as more of them are satisfied. When man has satisfied his physical needs, then psychologically grounded desires take over. These can never be satisfied or, in any case, no progress can be proved. The concept of satiation has very little standing in economics. It is held to be neither useful nor scientific to speculate on the comparative cravings of the stomach and the mind.
The second proposition is that wants originate in the personality of the consumer or, in any case, that they are given data for the economist. The latter's task is merely to seek their satisfaction. He has no need to inquire how these wants are formed. His function is sufficiently fulfilled by maximizing the goods that supply the wants.
J.K.Galbraith • The urgency of desire is a function of the goods which the individual has available to satisfy that desire. The larger the stock, the less the satisfactions from an increment. And the less, also, the willingness to pay. Since diamonds for most people are in comparatively meagre supply the satisfaction from an additional one is great, and the potential willingness to pay is likewise high.
Horst W. Opaschowski • The basis of the new consumer behaviour is the addiction to enjoyment awakened in people, the self-illusory hedonis. Insofar a consumer revolution can be expected in the future, where, in addition to usefulness and satisfaction, enjoyment and fun have their own, equally important value.
P.J.Grillo • We have fallen into the habit of buying everything (whether material or spiritual) under false standards, and are apt to mistrust our good judgment under the psychological pressure of advertising, public opinion, and routine.
Horst W. Opaschowski • Tomorrow's consumer lives between the poles of life's necessities and the illusionary life. This tension between two cultural traditions is similar to dancing on a erupting volcano. In daily life, every consumer must make his own personal decision. The consumer of tomorrow will live in two different buildings: in the 'iron cage' of economic necessity and in the luxurious castle of romantic dreams and pleasures. An over-exaggerated consumption, barely leaving room for personal initiative or actions is seen as the main danger. In the subjective prognosis of the future, tomorrow's consumer world lacks a real link to human needs and desires. As epicurean experience consumers, the leisure consumers are constantly looking for life's pleasures. Brought up in a prosperous atmosphere between individualism and hedonism, they developed an extraordinary ability to feel satisfied in their own skin: attributes such as athletic, young and sensual are meant to make the person appear more attractive. Consumption is always a part of the picture &endash; as acceptance consumption, prestige consumption, personality consumption &endash; as a means for expressing oneself. Particularly in the case of leisure consumption, one buys something which is not needed for the daily life but which makes living more worthwhile and more enjoyable.
P.J.Grillo • We no longer distinguish clearly between what is truly of importance and what really does not matter. This disease of the personality has even reached our physical well-being, as we let ourselves be fooled daily under the false pretense of food artificially colored, gelatinised, and flavored.
J.K.Galbraith • If production creates the wants it seeks to satisfy, then the urgency of the wants can no longer be used to defend the urgency of the production. Production only fills a void that it has itself created. The point is so central that it must be pressed. Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that creates the wants. That wants are, in fact, the fruit of production will now be denied by few serious scholars. This already means that the process by which wants are satisfied is also the process by which wants are created. The more wants that are satisfied, the more new ones are born.
J.K.Galbraith • The general conclusion of these pages is of such importance that it had perhaps best be put with some formality: as a society becomes increasingly affluent, wants are increasingly created by the process by which they are satisfied.
Then the production of goods satisfies the wants that the consumption of these goods creates or that the producers of goods synthesize. Production induces more wants and the need for more production.
Robert F. Kennedy • Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product, now, counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage...It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl... Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play... It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
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• to promote the philosophy of design known as
the "Humane Village" among designers, manufacturers and
consumers through the publication of
material and the holding of seminars and conferences.
• to develop methods and advise corporations
and consumers on issues related to socially responsible
design;
• to promote and establish a network of interested
parties and organizations.
Sources