For several decades, our increasing access to resources has made lives better and happier. Humans have consumed more of earth’s resources since 1950 than all of humanity combined previously.
However, for a number of years now, consumer studies academics have been picking up on changing spending habits, including an increased ambivalence towards consumption itself. There is evidence that people are buying less often and less overall.
The EY Malta 6th Future Consumer Index has found that, locally, the immediate effect of high inflation is understandably forcing many consumers to cut expenses on non-essential goods and services, including cosmetics, clothes and travelling. Unfortunately, the more financially distressed also have to economise on essentials like food to make both ends meet. But the survey also detected another pattern: people are “fundamentally rethinking” how they live their lives. While the change in mentality was, again, found to be mainly driven by the rise in the cost of living, other underlying dynamics are shaping Western post-consumer society.
Lifestyles are shifting gradually away from the consumer model which has dominated post-war capitalist economies. Buying more and more things as a source of identity and meaning seems to be gradually falling out of favour.
Modern advertising strategies are the primary vehicle responsible for creating the illusion that the good life is a life full of goods and that infinite economic growth on a finite planet is possible and desirable. This illusion is being increasingly questioned.
Much social research has pointed to the phenomenon of high-consumption societies also having high levels of personal anxiety, stress, depression, hypertension and heart disease. Many people work long hours, at times hold more than one job, sacrifice leisure time and sink themselves deep into personal debt just to have more stuff, use the latest gadgets, drive bigger cars and live in oversized homes with large mortgages. Yet, the levels of happiness are no better that they were 70 years ago.
Economic factors are undoubtedly forcing many to spend less and rediscover the good life based on making and sharing experiences by interacting with other people and places, attending events and undertaking affordable adventures. But the post-consumer era is also being driven by a new ethos based on the acknowledgement that the circus of consumer capitalism is no guarantee of happiness.
Many are also beginning to reflect and act on the harsh realities that lie behind Western societies’ obsession with rampant consumerism: we purchase clothes, electronics and other consumer goods made by exploited third-world workers and children, sold to us at excessive profit margins by greedy entrepreneurs and carried on ships, planes and trucks that burn fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow.
In our voracious consumption, we turn a deliberate blind eye to the social and environmental impacts that accompany our every consumer choice. We fail to see the folly of an economic mindset immersed in fundamental contradictions. It requires destructive behaviour for the system to function and set us ‘free’.
And, in promoting private consumption to generate economic growth, the political class fails to invest enough in social support networks that would ensure the vulnerable have enough to live a decent life.
The EY survey has confirmed that the current scaling back on consumer expenditure is a forced move resulting from economic necessity. What is needed next is for people to realise that limiting consumption, based on decisions about personal and global well-being, is not a reflection of personal failure.
It is the first step to rediscovering a good life based on simple experiences that enrich our lives.