Teach me how to be a moneymaking,
moneyspending machine.
Like most Americans, are you spending more and enjoying it less? Do your kids still say, “We’re bored. What can we do?” even though their playthings include lots of sports equipment, expensive mountain bikes, a laptop computer, an ipod, a cell phone, the latest video games, and a room full of high-tech musical and video toys? Not content with your Honda, don’t you have your eye on a BMW or a Lexus? After skiing at Stowe, will your family accept anything less than Aspen or Whistler? And aren’t you planning a vacation in Europe next summer? And maybe a second home?
How many times have your credit cards maxed out lately? What draws you to the mall, even though you hate crowds, and you complain about the schmaltzy piped-in music, the insipid smells, the fake glitter, and the plastic yuck? Do you enjoy working so hard to pay for all of the stuff your family buys – stuff which, more often than not, just sits around being used by no one?
Without realizing it, you may be suffering from a highly contagious malady, affluenza, popularized by the PBS television documentary bearing that title and described in the book by John deGraaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (Berrett-Koehler, 2001). Millions have been infected with this virus, which originated in the United States but has spread throughout the world. Affluenza is an obsession with materialism – consumer goods and services – ranging from beer, cosmetics, clothes, cigarettes, soft drinks, junk food, recreational drugs, video games, and rock music to automobiles, computers, electronic gadgets, expensive homes, priceless art objects, high-tech health care, and international travel. In addition to viral overconsumption, those infected with this disease often suffer from overwork, stress, consumer fatigue syndrome, information overload, and stock market delirium. It affects both the rich and poor alike. The more you have, the more you want. Enough never seems to be quite enough.
In response to their insatiable psychological and sensory needs, those who are into having often exhibit behavior patterns which are aggressive, competitive, and antagonistic. To have something is to take charge of it or to conquer it. Robbing, destroying, overpowering, and consuming are all forms of having. Those in the having mode are afraid of losing what they possess either to someone else or to the government or possibly through death.
As a nation we are so obsessed with having that we have lost our ability to be human beings. Our happiness depends mostly on our superiority over others, our power, and our ability to manipulate others. Capitalist America may be the most efficient and productive nation in the world, but it extracts a high human cost. Conspicuous consumption is no longer a sign of our success, but rather of our spiritual vacuum.
To cope with the powerlessness and our fear of nothingness, many of us spend our entire lives pretending we are invincible. One of the ways in which we try to convince ourselves that we will live forever is through conspicuous consumption. We think we can spend our way into a state of never-ending self-actualization without paying any psychological dues for our life of unrestrained pleasure. We live by the slogan, “I’ve got mine, Jack.”
For capitalism to work effectively, those who do the work must believe that the path to happiness involves accumulating enough money and credit so that we can purchase a nicely furnished home, a couple of cars, a computer, a boat, and a college education for our kids. To be able to afford all these things, we must work hard until we retire or die. The harder we work, the more money we will have, the more we can buy, and the happier we will be – so the story goes.
But if that were really true, why are so many people in the United States so anxious, so angry, so unhappy, so cynical, and so stressed out? Why are the rates of divorce, suicide, depression, abortion, substance abuse, and incarceration so high, if the American dream is working the way it is supposed to work? Although real per capita personal consumption expenditures nearly tripled during the last half of the twentieth century, the percentage of people claiming to be “very happy” actually declined by 5 percent. The Index of Social Health decreased by nearly 50 percent during the final quarter of the century.
Even though we lived in a period of unprecedented prosperity, it is also the time of the living dead. Many affluent Americans who deny themselves virtually nothing in the way of material satisfaction seem to be more dead than alive. As novelist Walker Percy once said, “There is something worse than being deprived of life; it is being deprived of life and not knowing it.”
Many of us who are infected with affluenza behave as though we were spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually dead. The living dead can be found everywhere – surfing the Internet, checking their e-mail, blogging, day trading, glued to Fox News hoping for an event in an otherwise uneventful life, driving alone across town to Wal-Mart in search of more low-priced plastic yuck, stopping at McDonald’s for a quick taste-free meal, feigning interest in a mindless bureaucratic job, and viewing the saga of Anna Nicole Smith on TV. Our government, our politicians, and the high priests of Corporate American pull our strings.
Our entire economy is driven by our intense psychological need to fill our spiritual and emotional vacuum with more stuff and our illusion that the accumulation of wealth and material possessions can provide meaning to life. If we feel down and need a life, we buy a new dress, have dinner in a nice restaurant, or rent a video. The less meaning we have in our life the easier it is to be seduced by the materialistic work hard, play hard, be happy syndrome – a syndrome that is based on a lie.
Although drug addiction is illegal, addiction to consumer goods, merchandise catalogs, shopping malls, cybershopping, and credit cards is encouraged by every form of advertising. From Washington and Corporate America the message is always the same, “Buy now and save for retirement later.” If we don’t play the game, the whole house of cards may come tumbling down. We have a patriotic duty to consume. To be a good American is to be a big consumer. Whoever dies with the most toys, wins the game. No one has contributed more to affluenza than Wal-Mart with its seductive low pries and promotion of the idea that what life is all about is the consumption of more and more stuff.
The global economy is the altar at which consumers and investors alike worship. The market is our god. So important is meaninglessness to our economy that Chicago business economist David Hale once said, “The only way to prevent the global economy from going into recession is through profligate American consumerism.” Affluenza is literally what keeps the American Empire afloat.
During World War II President Franklin D. Roosevelt challenged young Americans to enlist in the military and risk their lives fighting in Europe or the Pacific. To help fight terrorism President George W. Bush admonished us to shop or fly – either go to the mall and buy something or fly to Disney World. His multitrillion-dollar tax cuts were further evidence that the promotion of affluenza is official U.S. government policy. The recent interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve Board and the hastily passed Congressional economic stimulus package are more of the same.
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan once congratulated the American people on the performance of the economy. And what precisely had we done to deserve such an accolade? Spend money like it was going out of style. Greenspan’s worst nightmare was that through some medical, spiritual, or psychological miracle, an elixir might emerge which would significantly reduce the incidence of affluenza and render monetary policies impotent.
Is there enough meaninglessness in America to keep the global economy afloat? Most probably, there is. Meaninglessness breeds affluenza, and affluenza breeds more meaninglessness. Since there are no easy cures for either meaninglessness or overconsumption, there is absolutely nothing – other than ourselves – to prevent us from spending ourselves into oblivion.
Rebél
Thomas H. Naylor
March 1, 2008