Consumption and the Adolescent Adult
Retarded in the unfolding of his inner calendar, the individual is silently engineered to domesticate his integrity and share the collective dream of mastery. Changing the world becomes an unconscious, desperate substitute for changing the self.... The trouble with the eagerness to make a world is that, because the world is already made, what is there must first be destroyed.... We may now be the possessors of the world's flimsiest identity structure, the products of a prolonged tinkering with ontogenesis -- by Paleolithic standards, childish adults.
--- Paul Shepard, Nature and Madness
As our American Algorithm sinks into the sands of time, via the thousand small cuts of bad reports on employment, the auto industry, and interest rates, it might be a good time to examine the juvenile and ultimately absurd idea of building an entire civilization on the fickle foundation of consumer spending. We have essentially created an economy where it is both good and bad, at the same time, to overconsume. From a private responsibility perspective, with job insecurity and anxiety over future expenses like college tuition and retirement savings, it makes perfect sense to save money and reduce purchases of unnecessary items. But unfortunately, this virtuous frugality then cascades through our entire economy as the dreaded "lack of consumer confidence," triggering gloomy forecasts that in turn result in more layoffs and reduced investment. Think of it as the grim reversal of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand. In the classic laissez-faire argument, the private vices of greed, envy, and gluttony are transformed into public virtue, in the form of a growing economy. But in today's arrangements, where every conceivable commodity and function has been shoveled into the gaping maw of the market, things are so interdependent that the seemingly private virtues of thrift and frugality are the building blocks of public disaster; that is, economic recession or depression.
In the short term, this situation has been caused by the bad political choices and unavoidable systemic developments of the last few decades. We have been building the wrong type of society roughly since the end of World War Two, and especially since the mid-70s, the high point equitable wealth distribution in the US. We have gone all-in on the building and maintaining of suburban sprawl, with all of its accoutrements. We have allowed our small farm and manufacturing cultures to go by the wayside, in hopes that the New Economy would raise all boats, as we sold insurance, ad space, and real estate to each other. We squandered seas of cheap oil, which we should have known from the beginning would be temporary, in the construction of a way of life that cannot persist. We did not mind that the lion's share of the economic benefits of our society were being sucked upwards to a powerful plutocracy, which went on to purchase our government wholesale. We kept hoping that globalization, technology, and the wonders of a flat world would make us all into millionaires and high stakes playas. And we now know that this was all done with hallucinated money, leveraged and bundled ponzi-schemes of debt, hedged bets on future growth into eternity. As it turns out, economic growth alone, without regard to the nature of work or the distribution of wealth, is not the great panacea we thought it was.
But on a deeper level, we need to look at the psychological roots of a consumer spending-based society. After all, it is not the purchase of absolute necessities that has driven the robust growth in America. We're not where we are because of people buying food, practical clothing, and long-lasting durable goods. Our economy and society are based on an ever-increasing sphere of luxuries, upgrades, and planned obsolescences. Advertising bombards us at every turn, convincing us to buy the better, the cheesier, the more x-treme. Buy a car and keep it until it rusts out from underneath you? No way -- trade it in and get a new one every couple years (or better still, lease it). Hold on to that same cell for years, as long as it still performs the main functions of a phone? Please. You obviously need the new one with the 3-D mini-XBox whatever-it-is built in. It is this ceaseless stream of overconsumption that provides so many of the soft, New Economy jobs of the cutting-edge and uber-hip: graphic designer, advertising consultant, brand manager. Unfortunately, it is this same overconsumption that has brought us to the brink of eco-collapse and cultural vacuity. And this is not surprising, considering the essentially juvenile nature of American hyper-buying. The building blocks of our consumer society are actually adolescent habits and fantasies.
Think of the teenager. The teen is anxious, restless, obsessed with physical appearance, profoundly peer-referenced, and highly suspicious of authority. Notice the paradoxes here. Teenagers style themselves as rebels and nonconformists, bucking the system and laughing at their pathetic, out-of-touch parents. But within their peer-group, teens are cruel and intolerant of difference. It is a bizarre world that yanks the adolescent back and forth between separation and togetherness, difference and sameness. Within the proper environmental setting, these unusual characteristics of adolescence are temporary and socially constructive. If we keep in mind the tribal hunter-gatherer social form, which is the appropriately evolved milieu for human development, the experiences of the teen years allow the individual to construct a distinct identity, while simultaneously providing group cohesion. The challenge of becoming an adult is this transition away, but not too far away, from the wider community.
Again, in the appropriate natural setting, these teenage traits are left behind as the individual enters adulthood. The adolescent incorporates the world back into his/her sense of self and community, and a more integrated personality emerges. But we are animals, so our proper development is intimately tied up with the specific physical aspects of our surroundings, and only those types of outside stimuli can trigger healthy psychological transitions. Human beings have been matched to the correct natural triggers through eons of evolution, and without those triggers, bad things happen. In particular, the natural world provides the adolescent a very specific template from which to build the correct kind of adult identity. Nature as a model of self and community is mysterious, multi-faceted, fluid, and slow, demanding long stretches of quiet attention and contemplation. These aspects of nature create a definite sense of a powerful Other in the psyche of the adolescent, helping to form the correct personality type for living in tight communities.
In Western civilization, especially in its non-agricultural, urban manifestation, the natural triggers in the outside world are not present. The adolescent is never confronted with appropriate models from which to build notions of self and community. What is left, then, is a society of childish adults, frozen in adolescent forms of being: obsession with physical appearance and youth, a overly jingoistic in-group mentality, narcissistic self-absorption, anxious restlessness, and a paradoxical rebel-conformist streak. What should be temporary and constructive personality traits have become locked into our entire adult culture, perpetuated by the profoundly unnatural physical surroundings we have erected. It is this perpetual, restless adolescence that whispers in our ears to buy, consume, and conform. This micro-maladjustment at the individual level becomes, when writ large, a tsunami of overproduction and overconsumption, the vast surplus of stuff and activity that powers all of the other levels of collapse, from global warming to species extinction to gross economic inequality. It is a world built on adolescent angst.
To close again with Paul Shepard:
The transitory and normally healthy features of adolescent narcissism, oedipal fears and loyalties, ambivalence and inconstancy, playing with words, the gang connection, might in time be pathologically extended into adulthood, where it would be honored in patriotic idiom and philosophical axiom. The primary impulses of infancy would be made to seem essential to belief and to moral superiority, their repressive nature masked by the psychological defenses of repression and projection.... Adolescent dreams and hopes become twisted and amputated according to the hostilities, fears, or fantasies required by society.
Thus does a species kill itself.
In the short term, this situation has been caused by the bad political choices and unavoidable systemic developments of the last few decades. We have been building the wrong type of society roughly since the end of World War Two, and especially since the mid-70s, the high point equitable wealth distribution in the US. We have gone all-in on the building and maintaining of suburban sprawl, with all of its accoutrements. We have allowed our small farm and manufacturing cultures to go by the wayside, in hopes that the New Economy would raise all boats, as we sold insurance, ad space, and real estate to each other. We squandered seas of cheap oil, which we should have known from the beginning would be temporary, in the construction of a way of life that cannot persist. We did not mind that the lion's share of the economic benefits of our society were being sucked upwards to a powerful plutocracy, which went on to purchase our government wholesale. We kept hoping that globalization, technology, and the wonders of a flat world would make us all into millionaires and high stakes playas. And we now know that this was all done with hallucinated money, leveraged and bundled ponzi-schemes of debt, hedged bets on future growth into eternity. As it turns out, economic growth alone, without regard to the nature of work or the distribution of wealth, is not the great panacea we thought it was.
But on a deeper level, we need to look at the psychological roots of a consumer spending-based society. After all, it is not the purchase of absolute necessities that has driven the robust growth in America. We're not where we are because of people buying food, practical clothing, and long-lasting durable goods. Our economy and society are based on an ever-increasing sphere of luxuries, upgrades, and planned obsolescences. Advertising bombards us at every turn, convincing us to buy the better, the cheesier, the more x-treme. Buy a car and keep it until it rusts out from underneath you? No way -- trade it in and get a new one every couple years (or better still, lease it). Hold on to that same cell for years, as long as it still performs the main functions of a phone? Please. You obviously need the new one with the 3-D mini-XBox whatever-it-is built in. It is this ceaseless stream of overconsumption that provides so many of the soft, New Economy jobs of the cutting-edge and uber-hip: graphic designer, advertising consultant, brand manager. Unfortunately, it is this same overconsumption that has brought us to the brink of eco-collapse and cultural vacuity. And this is not surprising, considering the essentially juvenile nature of American hyper-buying. The building blocks of our consumer society are actually adolescent habits and fantasies.
Think of the teenager. The teen is anxious, restless, obsessed with physical appearance, profoundly peer-referenced, and highly suspicious of authority. Notice the paradoxes here. Teenagers style themselves as rebels and nonconformists, bucking the system and laughing at their pathetic, out-of-touch parents. But within their peer-group, teens are cruel and intolerant of difference. It is a bizarre world that yanks the adolescent back and forth between separation and togetherness, difference and sameness. Within the proper environmental setting, these unusual characteristics of adolescence are temporary and socially constructive. If we keep in mind the tribal hunter-gatherer social form, which is the appropriately evolved milieu for human development, the experiences of the teen years allow the individual to construct a distinct identity, while simultaneously providing group cohesion. The challenge of becoming an adult is this transition away, but not too far away, from the wider community.
Again, in the appropriate natural setting, these teenage traits are left behind as the individual enters adulthood. The adolescent incorporates the world back into his/her sense of self and community, and a more integrated personality emerges. But we are animals, so our proper development is intimately tied up with the specific physical aspects of our surroundings, and only those types of outside stimuli can trigger healthy psychological transitions. Human beings have been matched to the correct natural triggers through eons of evolution, and without those triggers, bad things happen. In particular, the natural world provides the adolescent a very specific template from which to build the correct kind of adult identity. Nature as a model of self and community is mysterious, multi-faceted, fluid, and slow, demanding long stretches of quiet attention and contemplation. These aspects of nature create a definite sense of a powerful Other in the psyche of the adolescent, helping to form the correct personality type for living in tight communities.
In Western civilization, especially in its non-agricultural, urban manifestation, the natural triggers in the outside world are not present. The adolescent is never confronted with appropriate models from which to build notions of self and community. What is left, then, is a society of childish adults, frozen in adolescent forms of being: obsession with physical appearance and youth, a overly jingoistic in-group mentality, narcissistic self-absorption, anxious restlessness, and a paradoxical rebel-conformist streak. What should be temporary and constructive personality traits have become locked into our entire adult culture, perpetuated by the profoundly unnatural physical surroundings we have erected. It is this perpetual, restless adolescence that whispers in our ears to buy, consume, and conform. This micro-maladjustment at the individual level becomes, when writ large, a tsunami of overproduction and overconsumption, the vast surplus of stuff and activity that powers all of the other levels of collapse, from global warming to species extinction to gross economic inequality. It is a world built on adolescent angst.
To close again with Paul Shepard:
The transitory and normally healthy features of adolescent narcissism, oedipal fears and loyalties, ambivalence and inconstancy, playing with words, the gang connection, might in time be pathologically extended into adulthood, where it would be honored in patriotic idiom and philosophical axiom. The primary impulses of infancy would be made to seem essential to belief and to moral superiority, their repressive nature masked by the psychological defenses of repression and projection.... Adolescent dreams and hopes become twisted and amputated according to the hostilities, fears, or fantasies required by society.
Thus does a species kill itself.
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