Consumerism and the Problem of Self-Identity

The blurring of the boundary between cultural experience and consumerism is one of the dominant elements of modern Western societies. If you enjoy visiting museums, pay careful attention to the experience at your next opportunity. In almost every major museum, you will find yourself at some point — usually at the end of your visit — in the gift shop where you are encouraged to participate not in a cultural experience, but rather in consumerism. "Please buy something before you leave!" is the message. So what was this experience of visiting a museum? Was it about art appreciation or about the economy? Was it about understanding and appreciating distant cultures and distant times or was it about being a consumer? What was the point of buying a cheap little replica of the Parthenon in the Acropolis Museum after you had marveled at the classic balance of the real thing?

Consumerism in its modern form is an integral part of a larger process of the economization of society. By "economization", I do not mean the "economizing", which would be at least an environmentally sound venture, but rather the converting of all values into economic terms. The economization of society means that all decisions are ultimately made on the basis of economic calculations. Whether we are talking about purchasing a new house, hiring a professor at a university, or getting married, all decisions are determined by an economic analysis. Internationally recognized in this area of research is Gary Becker, an economist who studied under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago and who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1992 for his extension of economic theory to human behavior. Today, I cannot discuss this process further, but I mention it because consumerism is a part of this larger process.

Focusing our attention now on consumerism itself, we think immediately of the fast-food industry, of internet companies like Amazon, of the day-after-Thanksgiving Christmas sales and so forth. So dominant is consumerism in American society that even Europeans often think that it began in the United States. When you consider that there is, for instance, a McDonald's in 190 countries, the notion that consumerism is an American invention seems obvious. In this case, however, the obvious is not correct. In contrast to the generally accepted opinion, consumerism as a modern phenomenon began in Europe and only later spread to the US. It is helpful, I think, to distinguish several phases of consumerism in order to see clearly the role that self-identity plays.

Modern consumerism began to develop in Western Europe around the middle of the eighteenth century. In its second phase, it spread to the United States, and thereafter the US became the primary force in further developing consumerism in the twentieth century. Today, consumerism is a global phenomenon of enormous proportions. Since I have already mentioned McDonald's, let's stay with the culinary example for a moment and see how consumerism began. We take it for granted that there are restaurants in every city, in every small community and on almost every street corner where we can enjoy a meal. There are fast-food restaurants, and there are very exclusive restaurants, but no matter where you are, there are restaurants. However, it was not always so. If we go back to the Middle Ages or even to the Renaissance, we won't find any restaurants. To be sure, there were guest houses where travelers could have a meal and spend the night before continuing their journey. But restaurants in the modern sense didn't exist — localities where people went to enjoy dining out as a form of entertainment. The first restaurants of this sort sprang up in eighteenth-century Europe for reasons that are not totally clear. At the same time, the experience of consumerism spread to other areas of life where new products became available. Coffee and tea became available in Europe. Cotton was imported at first from India and then produced in Europe itself. The middle class was emerging, and there was new prosperity that made the consumption of new products possible. And yet, neither the availability of new products nor the prosperity of the new middle class explains sufficiently the revolutionary attitude of consumerism.

The old European aristocracy of the seventeenth century exhibited notably less interest in consumable goods than the new middle class of the eighteenth century. The members of the aristocracy tended to be more traditional in their values and customs; their thinking focused more on preserving what they already owned than on acquiring something new. Furthermore, they tended to be constrained to some extent by traditional ethical and moral values about temperance and moderation — values rooted in religious convictions. Before consumerism could really blossom, traditional religious values had to be swept away, and that is precisely what happened during the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The "Age of Reason", as it was proclaimed, was the first cultural revolution in European history that was not oriented toward the past. The Renaissance was, in contrast, a rediscovering of the Greek and Roman classics. But the "Age of Reason" was different. It didn't value the past for what it could offer the present; instead, it brought about a radical break with the past so that new values guided by reason alone could prevail. Viewed from the standpoint of reason, there seems to be no convincing objection to consuming new products and goods at will. There is no logical reason against enjoying a new cotton garment from India, no reason not to enjoy dining out, no reason at all! With this shift in thinking, a Pandora's Box was opened that has led to a practical hedonism in Western societies, the last consequences of which we have not yet seen. The entire entertainment industry is based on hedonist thinking and thrives on the insatiable desire for pleasure that today has become globalized.

Before proceeding further, the events of the eighteenth century require our attention a bit longer. We have already mentioned the increased availability of products and goods, the new prosperity of the middle class, the erosion of religious values and the emergence of a nascent hedonism, but there was an additional factor in the eighteenth century that drove consumerism, and it is precisely this element that has become paramount today. The Europeans of the eighteenth century experienced an identity crisis of the first order. The breakdown of the aristocratic structure, the erosion of traditional values and particularly the emergence of the middle class disrupted all levels and segments of society. Suddenly, former plebeians became merchants, and the common people had money to buy the new products. As the merchants became more and more prosperous, the social position...