Role of Consumption
In the last few hundred years, the acquisition, flow and use of things – in short, consumption – has become a defining feature of our lives. In the rich world (and increasingly in the developing world) identities, politics, economies, and the environment are crucially shaped by what and how we consume.
Advanced economies live or die by their ability to stimulate and maintain high levels of spending – with the help of advertising, branding, and consumer credit. Taste, appearance, and lifestyle define who we are (or want to be) and how others see us.
Our Relation to Things
Possessions in a pre-modern village of an indigenous tribe pale when placed next to the growing mountain of things in advanced societies. This change in accumulation involved an historic shift in humans’ relations with things.
In contrast to the pre-modern village, where most goods were passed on as gifts or part of a wedding collection, things in modern societies are mainly bought in the marketplace, and, they pass through our lives more quickly.
Stuff & More Stuff
- A typical German owns 10,000 objects.
- In Los Angeles, a middle-class garage often no longer houses a car, but hundreds of boxes of stuff.
- In 2013, the United Kingdom was home to 6 billion items of clothing, roughly a hundred per adult – a quarter of these items never leave the wardrobe.
Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
Frank Trentmann
Who Knows Anyhow? 
The sad part of individual consumption or “hoarding” as it is commonly called is the self-loathing. In “Hello Dolly” the Hollywood musical myth that takes place in the 1890’s Dolly Levi reveals her life long adage of her deceased husband, “Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around, encouraging young things to grow.” Dolly’s fixation on money is treated humorously in the story, and she is proud and ostentatious. There is something to be said of the mercantile class and the upper class, with all their finery. Today’s hoarder makes a daily pit stop to Target or Homegoods or Sears, slowly, quietly choosing and using the store credit card to purchase the good. At home she throws the purchase on a designated pile that is the blight of possessions.
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