Brain Food #526
Materialism and adaptation
Thoughts of the day
At first glance, Barbara Kruger’s I Shop Therefore I Am could look like any conventional advertisement —the typeface, the bold message, the arty (albeit dark) photograph— but once we stop turning a blind eye to the copy, a new message starts to sink in.
I found it fitting that in the book I am currently reading, I happened to stumble upon a chapter on materialism, on the eve of Black Friday (or what is more commonly known as Thanksgiving night, in a wonderful irony in which the day for being grateful for what we already have is immediately followed by a day which tells us to want more).
The book, titled If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? (though it is hard to recognise either in oneself), takes the reader on an exploration of well-established research to understand how the most ‘successful’ people in the world often fail to reach happiness, no matter how much they strive for it.
Materialism, the book argues, and what drives us to buy the things we buy, is nothing more than an expression of our inherent need for superiority. We have been programmed to believe that if we are superior to others, or appear to be superior to others, often through our material possessions, we can achieve freedom: financial freedom, which can enable us to autonomously make our own decisions, and societal freedom, through an elevated status, which can enable us to speak our own mind without fear.
The more we chase status and compare ourselves to others, the unhappier we will become, especially when this is measured in non-arbitrary means, or in a context which involves more than one metric for ‘superiority’ (be it someone’s seniority at work, their salary, their skills, or their fame). The truth, proven time and time again, is that we adapt to new circumstances, both good and bad, very fast. There will always be someone stronger, more successful, to compare ourselves to. The bigger the pond we find ourselves in, the more the fish that will surround us, and the more we focus on being superior to others, the less we focus on doing what could lead to a happier life.
Instead of chasing the next big goal, we can devote our energies to doing what we enjoy, what feels right. And, of course, if we need to buy something that will enable us to do that then, by all means, we should, though odds are we will get used to its presence much sooner than we expected.
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