Are You Unhappy? Is It Because of Consumer Addiction?

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Are You Unhappy? Is It Because of Consumer Addiction?

_http://www.alternet.org/story/82013/_ (http://www.alternet.org/story/82013/)

 

By Charles Shaw, AlterNet

 

 

" An addict is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is

wrong. " --Stella Adler (1901-1992)

 

In last year's powerful independent documentary, What A Way To Go: Life at

the End of Empire, producer Sally Erickson pulled from her 20 years working as

a therapist in private practice to attempt to explain why so many people,

perhaps even you, are so unhappy.

 

The film from writer-director TS Bennett is an epic exploration of a Middle

American, middle-class white father of three coming to grips with climate

change, resource crises, environmental meltdown and the demise of the American

lifestyle. It is as compassionate a film as it is utterly terrifying.

 

Through a pastiche of revolutionary thinkers including Derrick Jensen,

Daniel Quinn, Jerry Mander, Richard Manning and Chellis Glendinning, What A Way

To

Go concludes that industrial civilization -- and its end product,

consumerism -- has disconnected us from nature, the cycle of life, our

communities, our

families and, ultimately, ourselves. This unnatural, inorganic,

materialistic way of living, coupled with a marked sharp decline in society's

moral and

ethical standards -- what the French call anomie -- has created a kind of

pathology that produces pain and emptiness, for which addictive behavior

becomes

the primary symptom and consumption the preferred drug of choice.

 

" What most of us experience when it comes to addiction, " says Erickson, " is

a pattern of continually seeking more of what it is we don't really want and,

therefore, never being fully satisfied. And as long as we are never

satisfied, we continue to seek more, while our real needs are never being met. "

 

" Addiction in one form or another characterizes every aspect of industrial

society, " wrote the social philosopher Morris Berman, and dependence on

substances or corporeal pleasures is no different from dependence on " prestige,

career achievement, world influence, wealth, the need to build more ingenious

bombs or the need to exercise control over everything. "

 

At the very least, this certainly raises questions about the dominant,

socially accepted view of addiction, the disempowering, less-than-hospitable

" disease model, " which claims addiction is a chronic illness predetermined by

genetics. The " disease-model " is characterized by a loss of control over

substances or practices, along with denial of the severity and consequences of

using

or engaging in them.

 

" Current research shows that genetics are the most significant factor in

addiction, " argues Bruce Sewick, a Chicago area substance abuse clinician who

works with the mentally ill. " A person is four times more likely to become

dependent on alcohol or drugs when there is a genetic history of the same. "

 

This may be true, but the pervasive pattern of addictive behavior that finds

its way into our economics, our politics, and our interpersonal

relationships cannot be just explained away using genetic predeterminism.

Consumption

without need is the hallmark of addiction, and " consumerism " is defined as " the

equating of personal happiness with the purchasing of material possessions

and consumption. " The pattern of out-of-control consumption in the United

States, which per capita consumes 70 times more than India, with three times

the

U.S. population, is not qualitatively different from the well-known patterns

of behavior of substance abusers. In fact, it looks as if the United States

just finished with the worst binge of its life and is now cresting the peak of

a wicked crash.

 

" I think consumerism is probably a bit of an addiction, " offers Richard

Eckersley, an Australian public health researcher featured in a 2003 radio

documentary, Consumerism, Money, and Happiness:

 

Addiction is really a hallmark of our era, and I think it reflects that we

don't have culturally promoted kinds of other deeper forms of meaning and

purpose in our lives. So we make up for it by consuming more. But the evidence

is

overwhelming that people who are characterized by materialistic attitudes

and values actually experience lower well-being, lower happiness, more

depression and anxiety and anger than people who aren't materialistic.

 

While we generally accept that anything can be used addictively, we often

tend to forget or overlook why it's being used in the first place. Most

professionals will agree that the purpose or function of an addiction is to put

a

buffer between ourselves and the experience or awareness of our emotions. An

addiction serves to numb us so that we are out of touch with what we know and

what we feel. Eventually this numb buffer zone becomes a habituated coping

mechanism.

 

" But addiction itself, " explains Tom Goforth, a Christian minister and

practicing clinical psychotherapist for more than 40 years, " is not innate to

the

human species. It's something we developed to cope with our predicament. "

 

Over the years Goforth saw most of the addictions he treated develop as the

result of some violation of the self, a deep wounding or trauma. This

wounding can come from any number of causes: domestic violence and abuse,

prejudice

and racism, warfare, economic hardship, illness and death, even something as

insidiously mundane as rejection, shame, insecurity or feelings of

inadequacy.

 

Primitivist writer-activists like Derrick Jensen and Chellis Glendinning

believe that consumer culture drives the " culture of empire, " an inherently

abusive system built on resource exploitation and the subjugation of peoples.

Because of this, those living in it have undergone a collective wounding or

trauma that has left society suffering from a mass form of PTSD.

 

Glendinning is the author of My Name Is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from

Western Civilization, a book that examines the relationship between addiction

and the ecological crisis. In an essay on what she calls " techno-addiction "

Glendinning writes about our " primary " and " secondary " sources of satisfaction.

" Primary " needs are those we were born to have satisfied: nourishment, love,

meaning, purpose and spirit. When they are not met, we turn to the

" secondary " sources, which include " drugs, violence, sex, material possessions

and

machines. " Eventually we become obsessed with the secondary sources " as if our

lives depended on them. "

 

Designing and marketing secondary sources of satisfaction falls to the

complimenting social, political and economic systems that reinforce addictive

behavior in order to drive the consumer machine. Consumption becomes

" naturalized " through corporate advertising and marketing, government tax

breaks, and

officially sanctioned religio-consumer holidays like Christmas, Hanukah and

Valentine's Day. Let us never forget that after 9/11 George Bush told Americans

it was their patriotic duty to " spend. "

 

" Everything appalling has to be naturalized in order to be justified, " says

Derrick Jensen, author of the Endgame series and The Culture of Make Believe.

" This is because an abusive system is designed to protect the abuser. The

whole idea of naturalizing addictions is about maintaining the dependency and

victimhood of the addict, the abused. "

 

In a system based on consumption, the best patient a doctor, therapist or

pharmacist can ask for is one who never gets better. Is it any coincidence then

that in the dominant model an addict always remains an addict? Under this

rubric, the addict is always " recovering " and never " recovered. " Imagine the

psychological impact of imposing a perpetual sense of powerlessness on someone.

It must be profound. But it suddenly makes a whole lot more sense when you

look at the few socially acceptable surrogates like AA, Prozac, work or Jesus.

Aren't these, in a sense, meant to be chronic as well? This approach simply

transfers the dependency while preserving the overall system of consumptive

behavior.

 

By the same token, what better consumer can a corporation ask for than one

who is never satisfied with what they buy, who always has to have the next,

the biggest, the newest in order to feel like they are somebody. If real needs

were being met, it's a good possibility that certain markets would contract

or collapse. Knowing this, our identities have in a sense been re-engineered

to accommodate forced obsolescence, so that every few years we're told we need

an upgrade. Tellingly, we call it our " new look " or the " new you. " Whole

industries are based in this.

 

Naturalizing addictions through consumerism has its beginnings in early 20th

century notions of psychology and social control. The story of how

consumerism, and more importantly, the consumer self, came into being is the

subject

of Adam Curtis' BBC documentary The Century of the Self. It is, at its core,

the story of Sigmund Freud.

 

In response to the barbarism of Nazi Germany during the Second World War,

which Freud believed was unleashed by the dangerous and irrational fears and

desires that lay deep within the unconscious, Western politicians and planners

set about finding ways to control this " hidden enemy within the human mind. "

 

One of the theories that emerged was the brainchild of Freud's nephew,

Edward Bernays, the sloganeering progenitor of public relations who helped

Woodrow

Wilson sell the First World War to the American public by inventing the tag

line, " Making the World Safe for Democracy. " " [PR] is really just

propaganda, " Bernays says in the film, " but we couldn't use the word because

the Germans

had. "

 

Bernays showed American corporations how to make people buy material goods

they didn't need by connecting those products to their unconscious desires and

unmet needs. This made him incredibly powerful and in demand. He used this

influence to propose that the same principles be used politically to control

the masses.

 

This social-control-through-indulgence model was later excoriated in Aldous

Huxley's Brave New World, a critique of consumerism and the vapidity of a

culture based in pleasure seeking. In Huxley's futuristic dystopia,

freethinking

and human attachment have either been outlawed or genetically modified out

of most of humanity. In its place is a dumbed-down hierarchical society

overrun by high-tech entertainment, sexual promiscuity and a powerful,

all-purpose

intoxicant/narcotic/dissociative drug called Soma, which is used to quell any

unpleasant feelings. Perhaps this sounds familiar?

 

" We can see where consumer psychology has led us, " Tom Goforth sighs

heavily. " It's a disaster. It's the kind of thing that has caused the human

organism

and psyche to go so far out of balance. Marketing to our unconscious leads

us down a dangerous path that promises satisfaction and wholeness and a sense

of importance and worth without us having to do anything but spend. But none

of these things come in any real sense unless we work hard at them. "

 

The ego, Freud discovered, is the part of us that invests in the values of

society that hold out fulfillment for us. We as individual human beings may be

looking for fulfillment through our contribution to society and our own

sense of meaning, integrity, love and connection. " But instead, " Goforth says,

" consumerism teaches the ego to let go of integrity and inflate itself with an

aesthetic, material process that confuses, or associates, self-worth with net

worth. "

 

This is the gospel preached by activist-performance-artist Reverend Billy of

the Church of Stop Shopping, star of the upcoming What Would Jesus Buy?, an

anti-consumer road film produced by Super Size Me's Morgan Spurlock. Rev.

Billy preaches that consumerism has become our great national addiction.

 

" If we're ever going to move away from being consumers and back to being

citizens, society will need to go into recovery, " says the good reverend. " I

recommend at least 60 to 90 days away from the shopping just to detox. If we

don't repent, " he warns, " then the Shopocalypse is coming! "

 

Asking society to go into a global recovery program is not nearly as Dr.

Phil-crazy as it sounds. It's become the new mantra of the green movement, who

are now calling for a spiritual solution to the planetary crisis. It was

Freud's student and eventual rival Carl Jung who first dissented against

Freud's

" irrational desires " theory and put forth the idea that addictions address a

spiritual loss or deficiency. Because the addictive experience is mimetic of

the spiritual experience, you can have an imitation of bliss or oneness, but

it doesn't last. Jung believed only a true spiritual awakening will end an

addiction. Likewise, the eco-ilk believe only a global spiritual awakening will

end the consumer addiction that is ravaging the planet.

 

In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson, the evolutionary

philosopher husband of anthropologist Margaret Mead, observed that addictive

behavior

is consistent with the Western approach to life that pits mind against body.

Because of this schism, Bateson gave our species a low probability of

continued survival.

 

" In order to avoid this literal death, " Derrick Jensen adds soberly,

" society will have to go through a cultural death and spiritual rebirth. "

 

Heady words for sure, but it may be our only way out of this mess. For this

process to begin, consumer society must first " hit bottom. " Let us hope this

happens soon. As Sally Erickson reminds us, the patterns of behavior endemic

to consumer society are so much more dangerous than substance abuse, because

they are perpetuating a culture that is literally eating itself out of house

and home. If addicts define insanity as doing the same thing over and over

again, and expecting different results, this may be the clearest sign yet that

consumerism is driving us all crazy.

 

But there is hope to leave you with. In his 40 years treating addicts, Tom

Goforth will honestly tell you that, by and large, those who did truly conquer

their addictions became less materialistic and more aligned with a sense of

who they really were and what they felt their life purpose was.

 

Maybe it's time for that intervention.

 

Charles Shaw, a Chicago-based writer, is a regular contributor to AlterNet.

He is the former editorial director of the Conscious Choice publications and

a contributor to Reality Sandwich. He is currently writing Exile Nation, a

drug war memoir.

 

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

 

View this story online at: _http://www.alternet.org/story/82013/_

(http://www.alternet.org/story/82013/)

 

 

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