consumerism

Consumerism Is Fun. Consumerism Will Destroy You: Finding Meaning in a Meaningless Consumer Society

Consumerism Is Fun. Consumerism Will Destroy You: Finding Meaning in a Meaningless Consumer Society

We worship the consumer because the consumer is us. We consume constantly and obsessively. We buy clothes to the tune of $12 billion dollars a year, far more than is needed for our existence. We consume food and alcohol like no other country, spending thousands of dollars per a person. We consume thousands of hours of television and movies and video games a year. We buy furniture. We buy 75-inch TV’s not out of any sense of utility but because “why not?” We take lavish vacations we definitely cannot afford, maybe because we think we deserve it. (But I get the sneaking suspicion some of that is related to wanting to put those pictures on our Instagram or Snapchat stories.) We are on a neverending treadmill of consumption. Are we actually free any real sense if this is the case? Aren’t we just slaves to wage labor?

I tend to think so. I don’t see most people at peace. At least not the ones I see in therapy, which is admittedly as skewed sample size).  I see anxiety and consuming and more anxiety and more consumption from the general population. And I see how we are more and more slaves to our phones. I don’t know if I realized this fully until recently but social media, while useful for keeping in touch with people, is hijacking our brains. As Sean Parker, a founder of Facebook has said about the platform he started, “It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” 

Pleasure Vs. Happiness

Pleasure Vs. Happiness

Recently I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about the brain, happiness and addiction. It’s been eye-opening. Most people’s defintion, I’ve come to realize, relates to pleasure, but do not have a concept of what long-term happiness is.

What’s the difference? Pleasure is short-term. It’s the dopamine kick we get in anticipation and from using something. Examples of pleasure run the gamut from gambling to sex to food to drugs. In all respects our brains from what one point of view is the brain of an addicts. Think of the card player or slot jockey at a casino. Or maybe the heroin addict. Or the cigarette smoker. Or how about the newest addiction, that of our addiction to our phones. Often times we think we have free will and are choosing to do these things. But neurochemically the picture can be interpreted quite differently. It some respects, without realizing, we are just chasing dopamine hit after dopamine hit, slaves when we think we’re free.

Happiness is different. In fact I don’t even like the word happiness because so many people associate it with pleasure. I prefer the Aristotelian word, eudaemonia, which translates roughly to contentment of the human spirit. This sort of contentment of the spirit is not chased by dopamine hits. (For the record, I don’t have anything inherently agains short-term pleasure. I’ve been known to polish off a pint of ice cream and smoke too many cigarettes in my day!) How one reaches eudaemonia is of course different for anyone. I’m almost 40 and I think I’m just fully coming into my own form. But I’ve had to make some changes in my life.

Pay Attention, Pay Attention, Pay Attention: Five Ways to Reclaim your Attention in a Distracted World

Pay Attention, Pay Attention, Pay Attention: Five Ways to Reclaim your Attention in a Distracted World

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”

― Alan W. Watts

"The average American throws away 65 pounds of clothing per year." -Huffington Post


Early in Matthew Crawford’s “The World Beyond Your Head”  the author walks through an airport. Maybe for the first time, he notices the bombardment of advertising everywhere. There are the billboards and TVs. The signs of restaurants, the ads in his Forbes Magazine, the ads on the podcast he’s listening to or in front of the bathroom stalls. Even the backs of chairs have deals to the local hotels and clothing stores. Each is expertly designed to get his attention, designed by professionals who know just the right colors and sounds and fonts and pictures to get you to notice what they’re selling.

Minimalism and Simplicity in a Capitalist World

Minimalism and Simplicity in a Capitalist World

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. 
  — Henry David Thoreau

Lately I have been thinking and reading about living a minimalist life. My ideas aren't fully fleshed out yet, and I am not fully sure how to implement them into my own life yet. But the thoughts are brewing. My mind has felt cluttered lately, a cup filled to the brim and spilling out with concerns that often feel meaningless and unnecessary to living an essential life.  

I often wonder how we all got here. I don't have any comprehensive or perfect answers. But I do know this: in session after session with depressed patients, the word "should" is uttered often. I should be skinnier, or have a better job, or a better apartment or I should have six-pack abs like Zac Efron or should have dresses like the one Michelle Obama wore at her convention speech.