consumerism

An ideology and set of behaviors that values human beings primarily based on what they own.

Kindred with materialism, it seeks value primarily in the accumulation of material possessions. Related to conspicuous consumption (Thorstein Veblen: The Theory of the Leisure Class).

Consumerism makes us depressed and anxious

The work of Tim Kasser, summarized in Lost Connections, has shown that “materialistic people, who think happiness comes from accumulating stuff and a superior status, had much higher levels of depression and anxiety.” From Lost Connections by Johann Hari:

Twenty-two different studies have, in the years since, found that the more materialistic and extrinsically motivated you become, the more depressed you will be. Twelve different studies found that the more materialistic and extrinsically motivated you become, the more anxious you will be.

Why would this be? Materialism impairs our ability to form meaningful relationships:

He teamed up again with another professor, Richard Ryan…to study two hundred people in depth, and they found that the more materialistic you become, the shorter your relationships will be, and the worse their quality will be.

What you really need are connections. But what you are told you need, in our culture, is stuff and a superior status, and in the gap between those two signals—from yourself and from society—depression and anxiety will grow as your real needs go unmet.

[…] And the pressure, in our culture, runs overwhelmingly one way—spend more; work more. We live under a system, Tim says, that constantly “distracts us from what’s really good about life.” We are being propagandized to live in a way that doesn’t meet our basic psychological needs—so we are left with a permanent, puzzling sense of dissatisfaction.

Consumerism threatens the climate

Carbon emissions from the world’s richest countries (fueled by consumerism) vastly outpace emissions from less-wealthy countries. For example, the average citizen of the United States is responsible for 7x more carbon emissions than the average Indian, and 35x more carbon emissions than the average Kenyan. This is doubly unjust because the average Indian or Kenyan will suffer more from the effects of climate change.