Living in a ‘consumogenic’ world…

This weekend I sat deciding whether or not to 'upgrade' my iPhone X for a new iPhone 12… iResearched, iCompared, iLusted, iAgonised and at the end iFelt it was wrong to get rid of a phone that still worked perfectly. This got me to wondering, what is it that compels us to feel the need to buy, buy buy!

We live in a 'consumogenic' environment that encourages excessive material consumption.

I'm stealing the morphology from 'obesogenic'. A word used to describe how a world full of calorific convenience foods, upsized portions and where we drive rather than walk, has created a global epidemic of obesity. In other words, the environment we have created for ourselves is making many of us sick!

In much the same way, the environment we live in today also encourages us to consume material goods far beyond our needs, making us and our planet very sick indeed!

The world we inhabit calls out to us to buy more stuff… and it's hard to turn away, or turn off.

For the longest time, we've fetishised excessive shopping, we love people who flex the latest new stuff, from KimK to Dr Dre…!

We've been brought up on it, Carrie from Sex in the City was worshipped as she dizzily waltzed from shop to shop buying outfits and shoes before collapsing on her bed with a clutch of bags tired but happy. 

We didn't consider that in IRL Carrie would probably have been heavily in debt because she couldn't afford the clothes, the endless packaging waste, the destroyed habitats, dried-up lakes, poisoned rivers and exploitative labour practices caused by the garment trade.

I know I'm a buzzkill, I'm taking away all the fun and romance of the moment, being sooo serious. However, the fun and romance of buying have been placed artificially in our minds. The art of selling has evolved and become stylised over many centuries, principally the late twentieth century, the consumer's century.

It's time we saw excessive consumption as a societal illness rather than an individual lifestyle choice to be celebrated!

Since the dawn of man, material possessions have been an indicator of status for humans. Archaeological accounts of grave goods across cultures show us that stuff was so important to our ancestors; they often thought they would need their possessions in the afterlife!

But in the twentieth-century advertisers got better and better at highjacking our psychology to encourage us to buy. Products could change perceptions of attractiveness, masculinity, femininity sophistication, and buying things could help you achieve the life you want and be the kind of person you want to be

We are now micro-targeted on social media to follow influencers; who intern present their extraordinary lives complete with holidays they are paid to go on, clothes they are paid to wear, and products they are paid to use.

The fulfilment of our product desires is also now only a click away day or night. I think of this race of retail as being a race to be closest to cognition. This is really the secret of Amazon's vast retail success, as soon as you've thought it you can buy it with one click.

This sort of onslaught on our senses is overwhelming; our brains can't filter out the constant appeals to buy and always has the opportunity to buy. The very fabric of the digital world we spend our time in via social media is paid for by advertisers who want us to buy as much as possible.

This gets to the heart of the problem with our consumogenic world. No one gets paid to encourage others to buy fewer things or to mend and make do.

We need to change the calculus of consumption, to one where we are encouraged to consume less and better, rather than more!

The answer to this challenge starts with realising we're all in the matrix, that much of what we see around us isn't real, that it's a world created to tempt us, and that we don't have to buy things to feel happy or to be attractive to others!

But the answer needs to go much further, the consumogenic matrix that surrounds all of us is so pervasive it's almost impossible to evade without going totally off the grid. 

We're going to need government interventions such as taxing consumption and rewarding reuse, encouraging product as service business models, demanding the circular use and reuse of materials.

It's going to take a lot of innovation by individuals and companies. I'm disappointed the companies that lead in innovation the Amazons, Apples and Nikes have done so little on this to date.

So if you're feeling bad about the amount of stuff you buy, remember you're not alone and that it's not really your fault, the cards are somewhat stacked against all of us! Do try to take time away from the places that are full of temptation, take a pause, and think if I didn't buy this what could I do instead! Perhaps try to buy fewer things, buy older things, buy better things, buy things made in better ways, and cherish them!