We've Been Groomed to Consume

Groomed to Consume

We have been groomed to consume. And we've been made to believe that our consumption is somehow patriotic. We sedate our senses with every bite, every click, every scroll, and every sip. And then we congratulate ourselves for being good Americans and exemplary consumers. Because we're faithfully doing exactly what TV commercials and pop culture have brainwashed us to do from birth: consume.

America ranks number one in consumer spending. Storage facilities are the fastest-growing business in the country. The average American consumes 169 pounds of sugar per year, and 23 pounds of ice cream annually. We collectively consume 3 billion pizzas a year, or 250 slices a second. We drink 6.3 billion gallons of beer per year, or 26.2 gallons per person. Undertakers now offer "supersized" caskets as we pile on pounds - a distressing realization that even after death, it can be hard to find something that fits. Americans watch over 5 hours of TV daily. And we spend at least 17 hours scrolling social media per week. Over 40% of the population is on psychotropic drugs. And we have the highest rates of depression in the richest country in the world. 

Consumption is the "opiate of the masses." It is an ideological tool that legitimizes and defends the interests of a small but dominant, wealthy class by placating the poor and exploited with delicious and addictive things. Consumption has become a means of numbing our deeper frustrations. We have been pressured to conform by the systems around us, because their existence depends on our conformity. Slogans like "Have it your way," "Just do it," and "Open Happiness" lull us into a hypnotic state of complacency, consumption and compliance.

The Roots of Consumerism

Consumerism is rooted in shame. It simultaneously feeds into and feeds off a sense of inadequacy. This is because we have been made to feel unworthy. Industries are designed to profit off our insecurities. The market aims to own us by making us feel more shame about ourselves. Because the more shame we feel, the more money we spend. Marketers have known this for a century and know how to push the right "consumer buttons" to drive our purchasing behavior. 

Consumption is a form of self-soothing. When we don't feel good on the inside, we seek external things to fill the void and define our identity. Instead of starting with high self-worth, we buy more stuff to make ourselves feel better. This behavior comes in many forms, from alcoholic to shopaholic; and regardless of how destructive or benign, these addictions are deeply rooted in the shame we feel inside. That shame prevents us from being authentic, which drives us to buy more to mask our inadequacies.We try to fix internal feelings with external patches, treating the symptoms rather than the root cause. This outside-in, extrinsic, profit-motive approach is backwards. People chase external "identity" to feel fulfilled, thinking the outside fix will solve an inside problem. And therein lies the psychology behind the Consumption Economy.

The Consumption Economy

The Consumption Economy is driven by the Profit Motive. And when The "Profit Motive" is the driving force, it supplants any higher virtue. Each industry becomes a mechanism for extracting profit, and people simply become a means to an end. Materialism, the culture of consumption, and instant gratification feed our self-indulgence. The Consumption Economy is designed to mute our genius; to distract us from that unique and priceless gift we were put on this planet to give; and to prevent us from living the life we were created to live and making the contributions we were created to make. 

Consumption provides immediate and powerful gratification. It makes us feel validated, approved of, even loved. It distracts us with a cheap, easy fix that keeps us from making our most meaningful contributions. This principle applies to drugs, shopping, naughty websites, mindless TV, idle gossip, alcohol, and the consumption of all products saturated in fat, spiked with sugar, sprinkled with salt, or dripping in chocolate. You can tell by the measure of hollowness you feel afterward. The more empty you feel, the more certain you can be that your behavior was probably driven by The Profit Motive. Ultimately, we are overfed and undernourished, stuffed with products and starved for purpose. 

The Contribution Economy

The Contribution Economy is driven by the Purpose Motive. The quest for excess will never satisfy our deepest call to significance. As changemakers, it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution—a private insurrection inside our minds. In this uprising, we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture. This is a call to shift from a Consumption Economy to a Contribution Economy. 

That still, small voice, telling you as it has ten thousand times before, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Your contribution is that calling or action that [Resistance] most wants to stop us from doing. That calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a higher station morally, ethically, or spiritually. 

The Need for a Shift

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life inside us. One is driven by profit; the other is driven by purpose. Have you ever wanted to be a humanitarian; to advocate for the weak and helpless; to run for office; to crusade for the planet; campaign for world peace, or to preserve the environment? Late at night, have you been confronted with a vision of the person you might become, the work you could accomplish, the realized being you were meant to be? Are you a writer who doesn't write, a painter who doesn't paint, an entrepreneur who never starts? 

Consumerism is one of the most toxic forces on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, or receding hairlines. To yield to it deforms our spirit. It stunts our growth, numbs our conscience, and makes us less than we are capable of being. We have been sold a story of consumption, and convenience, and compliance, striving for status in a world supposedly strapped by scarcity. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work, we simply consume a product. 

Do we have to let this consumer culture cripple and disfigure our lives before we wake up to its lies? Too many of us have become drunks, drug addicts, developed tumors, neuroses, succumbed to painkillers, gossip, compulsive cell phone use, simply because we don't do that thing we've been uniquely designed to do. If tomorrow morning, by some stroke of magic, every numb and sedated soul woke up with the power to pursue their own distinct contribution, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. Prisons would stand empty. Alcohol and tobacco industries would collapse, along with junk food, cosmetic surgery, and infotainment businesses, not to mention pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and medical professionals from top to bottom. Online trolling would become extinct, as would addiction, obesity, migraine headaches, road rage, and dandruff. 

It's time to shift from a Consumption Economy to a Contribution Economy. This requires that we move from the Profit Motive to the Purpose Motive, from extrinsic validation to intrinsic validation. This shift is essential to turn away from the culture of comparison and embrace our innate strengths. We can create solutions we wish existed and foster a sense of meaning that transcends mere materialism.The Contribution Economy emphasizes creating value over consuming products. Because we were groomed to consume; but we were made to create.

“A man who lacks purpose distracts himself with pleasure.” - Viktor Frankl