Now that December is almost over, I don’t need to worry about people thinking that I’m poo-pooing the holiday season by writing this. You might think it’s because I didn’t get enough Christmas presents this year (and I didn’t, dammit!), but it’s a philosophy that I firmly believe in: people put way too much emphasis on “stuff”.
This is something I’ve tried writing about in the past, but it was difficult to maintain a singular focus—I had a tendency to realize something else as I was writing, then shifting to that subject because it seemed more important. Thus, if this all ends up being rather convoluted, you’ll have to forgive me.
That being said, let’s see if I can find a good starting point. How about capitalism? Let’s start with capitalism because it sucks. And I’m not saying that just because the hookers on Lake Street jack up their prices during the holiday season. Supply and demand: the two essential items of any economic scheme that, in America, is growing. Constantly. Quickly. Almost obscenely.
Take a look at a Third World country for a moment. People are living in squalor, they’re sick, they’re starving and they’re dying. Constantly. Quickly. Almost obscenely. How much money does it take to fill a stomach in Rwanda? What do those Christian benefit funds commercials say, a dollar a day? Maybe less? An amount way lower than the cost of a Big Mac. It wouldn’t take much to provide them with what they want because there’s such a low supply. Low supply plus high demand equals serious rate of poverty.
Now let’s take a look back at America. We have lots of people living in big cities, living in the suburbs, living in secluded mansions in the boondocks. But we also have people who are sick, starving and dying here as well. Why? Seems like we have a pretty high supply—hell, I remember a time I went to Perkins and saw someone leave an entire plate of pancakes untouched. Where does the food go afterwards? In the trash. That supply could be used to feed someone, but it gets wasted. So many folks living in the street that have such a small demand, yet they receive an even lower supply.
But that’s not what I want to focus on. It’s tragic that anyone should suffer such poor treatment in these modern times, but all of us are trapped within the supply and demand system. There’s plenty of stuff out there and we keep buying it. The more we buy, the more that gets produced and the cycle continues. Even when the supply of goods could be met, we always want more. Why?
Because we want a way to distinguish ourselves from those people forced to dig in the dumpster behind Perkins for those pancakes someone just tossed. There are so many people in the Third World and even here at home who struggle merely to survive. Sure, no one has to fight off wild boars in the streets of downtown Minneapolis to protect their favorite park bench, but they still need a certain amount of stuff just to keep going—cardboard boxes and clean underpants can only do so much.
We want to do more than just survive, so we’ve got our stuff: refrigerators, computers, air conditioners, vibrators—you know, the good stuff. We’re in pretty good shape, we’ve been successful in life, we can sustain ourselves pretty well, but why aren’t we constantly elated that we have more than the minimum for survival?
Because people don’t want to settle for the minimum. We want to be significant. We want to be able to stand up and say more than “I’ve achieved equilibrium with nature!” We want to say, “Here’s me! I don’t just fit into a mold! I’m someone special!” What’s the equivalent of significance in our capitalist society? Success.
The more we can accomplish, the more important we feel and the more stuff we can buy. “No one’s gonna know that I can accomplish a lot and I’m special unless I’ve got two computers instead of just one. Especially since one has a really big hard drive for saving dirty pictures from the Internet.” Thus, the greater demand for stuff that demonstrates success requires a greater supply and things continue getting built for our personal satisfaction. But it all breaks down in the end.
Companies these days design stuff in a specific manner “to control costs”: they continue testing the product and continue decreasing its quality until it turns into worthless shit, then they bump it back up one level. The process makes things less expensive and it also explains why my tape player keeps trying to eat any cassettes I put in there.
If we decide to say “Fuck the cost,” things would last a lot longer. If you need proof of that, come on over to my parents’ house and I’ll show you a refrigerator that’s been working for well over thirty years. What’s the average lifespan of a fridge these days? Eight years? Nothing even close. Quality has gone down the toilet and we have to keep buying new stuff to replace our old stuff.
Once we have to get a replacement, though, the new stuff is new. There are different features, different functions, different styles or colors or flavors (Vibrators! Now waterproof and yummier than ever!). We could get one similar to the one we used to have—either one will still show we’re successful people—but the refrigerator that glows red at night and has extra shelves is much cooler. If we can get something that functions a little better and seems a little cooler, we’ll usually buy that instead.
So now we’ve got a collection of new stuff. Everything works fine, nothing’s breaking down, we’re well beyond survival… but something a little cooler just get developed. We don’t need it, but it couldn’t hurt to have it, right? After all, it’s newer and cooler than our old stuff. Once we’ve got even newer stuff, though, more gets developed and the cycle continues.
Some people stick with what works and only replace things when the original one breaks—no problem with that. Still, when something new comes out that makes life more convenient, even these other folks may want it. You can keep kneeling on the floor and wiping up when the baby pukes up all the strained peas he ate for lunch, but if you can buy the new super-absorbent Swiffer Picker-Upper (with a vibrating head that’s now waterproof!), it’ll make things a lot easier.
With capitalism and success comes convenience. Now life is good because of stuff, right?
Wrong.
Society has reached the point where a person can avoid any and all human contact whatsoever. Well, maybe you have to get up off the couch to pay the pizza delivery guy, but that’s about it. You can wake up in the morning, telecommute for your job, reheat yesterday’s delivery pizza in the microwave, check out the dirty pictures on your computer instead of checking out the hookers on Lake Street… you never have to interact with a single person.
That, my friends, is a problem. I speak from personal experience when I say that complete isolation makes a man miserable. You can pump up your chest and preen all you want about your possessions, but if no one else is around to appreciate your new big screen TV, you might as well move your recliner closer to the tube to make it seem larger. Your stuff might make life easier and it might make you feel more important, but it will leave you unfulfilled. It may be convenient and it may keep you occupied, but it cannot give you significance. In the end, “stuff” is just stuff.
Consider this hypothetical: there are two desert islands. Two boats crash and one person ends up on each island. One island has all the stuff that a person could ever want; on the other, you’re left eating coconuts for the rest of your life. When you think about those two islands, one might have a whole lot of conveniences to make life easier, but the person stuck there is still a castaway.
So what’s left? Us. All of us.
When are we the happiest? When we’re with our friends and loved ones. When we’re with people who know we’re significant because of who we are, not what we have. Those closest to us cry when we fail. They cheer when we succeed. Their presence joins ours and becomes a whole greater than its individual parts.
If you need convincing, try watching a funny movie by yourself. You smile and laugh at the best parts. It was a pretty good flick, really. Then watch it again with a group of friends. I don’t care how many times you might have seen it before, everyone will laugh a lot harder. If there’s a magical explanation for why this happens, I don’t know what it is. All I know is that it does happen.
Stuff can provide certain things—convenience, food service, or marital aids—but it cannot provide us with happiness. What we really need in the end is our connections to other people. Our feelings reflect and amplify each other, a result of intimate contact that material satisfaction could never match.
That doesn’t mean I’m throwing down my keyboard, heaving my computer out the window and going to live in a cave where I’ll hang out with Neanderthals and hunt down wild boars in the streets of downtown Minneapolis. No, I’m still gonna keep my stuff around because convenience isn’t inherently a bad thing. However, I don’t want to be a 20-something trapped in the basement, only rising to reheat pizza in the microwave or get new batteries for (Vibrators! Now called “personal massagers” and produced in masculine colors for your convenience!) my stuff.
So what I am gonna do is keep my contacts with people intact and healthy. I’ll write to people who live in far-off lands, I’ll call people when there won’t be long-distance charges and I’ll sneak up on people from behind to give them a hug. Okay, I admit, it’s a limited list—pizza delivery guys usually don’t appreciate that kind of attention. Still, I want to keep connecting with my friends and family. I want to be significant. I want to be happy and help other people be happy.
And that, my friends, is the greatest success of all.
