Consumerism, capitalism not quite the same game

I was talking to a friend of mine about a paper I’d written on the roots of modern American… I was talking to a friend of mine about a paper I’d written on the roots of modern American ills, and he asked me, “So, what are we going to do about this crisis of consumerism you wrote about?”

It’s one hell of a question. In proper, though accidental, tradition, I avoided answering it. Truthfully, I’m not sure I have an answer, but I do have a place to start. First thing’s first — we’ve got to get our terms straight. It’s not a solution, but at least we’ll have something to aim for.

From senior year in high school until about sophomore year in college, I used the words capitalism and consumerism interchangeably. I declared my petulant and uninformed war, then proceeded to commit all sorts of treason: shopping at Wal-Mart, buying name-brand clothes, enjoying commercials and working for corporate monstrosities.

More and more, my sporadically enforced vow to know my enemy began to result in an uncomfortable — if still incomplete — enlightenment. There are many, many results of capitalism I object to, but I’m not entirely sure it’s evil. I’m not entirely sure it’s really any one thing at all.

Marx made some damn fine points about ruining other cultures with cheaply priced goods and perverting people’s occupations into labor. I can’t for an instant defend the way wealth seems to get distributed in a capitalist system. No characteristic or success can make one human being worth one thousand dollars and another one billion.

However, I’m cool with people not starving to death. I’m OK with lower priced goods and I can even defend open trade and the loss of American jobs to that end. It’s tempting to look at capitalism and see an unsteady — at times precarious — onward movement of human progress. For all my protests, I’m not entirely convinced that vision isn’t untrue.

Consumerism, on the other hand, is an undeniable problem. That it’s linked to capitalism gives capitalism a worse rep, but the two are not identical.

Consumerism is the unintended resurrection of the paralyzing desperation that characterized human existence before we began this self-destructive trek to luxury. We’ve re-created starvation in a nation where, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, 30 percent of adults older than 20 are obese. We’ve bred a world of terror in an age that could, for once, afford to be at peace. We’ve invented a form of communication previously unimaginable and we’ve used it to become more isolated.

How? The value of an object — even a person — isn’t in the characteristics it possesses or in the uses we have for it. Anyone can imbue anything with value the moment he convinces another person to accept this artificial worth. Capitalists have availed themselves of this process, transmuting the worthless to profit.

Amazon is selling collectible “Star Wars” toys for up to $599.99. The $1,325 king-size sheet set, at least, has some practical use. This system of manufacturing value perverts natural sensibilities. It alienates us from the real world and real needs, with practical boundaries — where the value of things is based on what they are and what they can do.

Consumerism lies between our natural needs and these contrived things we try to sate them with. It lies there devouring the honest, the natural and the intimate leaving us no choice but to continue consuming anything that we think might satisfy us.

The utter failure to be complete while surrounded by every imaginable comfort kills some and maims far more. It’s a sickness in society that ruins marriages, distorts people’s self images and keeps us from clearly seeing anything of genuine substance.

After almost four years of college, all I can do is sketch out vague battle lines. I’m not sure how best to proceed. I’m as much influenced by this mindset as anyone — knowing you’re in the jaws of a dragon isn’t escaping, and it certainly won’t slay him.

Burn the puppets with Zak Sharif at rzs8@pitt.edu.