Having been raised in an extremely low income family I spend a large chunk of my teenagehood coveting other people’s material possessions which I could not afford. Instead of feeling pissed off about my financial situation I began to research anticonsumerism and the psychology of spending to assure myself that it had been a blessing in disguise that I was never given money by my family, and I’m very glad I did. Although this book focuses more on the environmental impact of overconsumption than I would have liked, it does have a chapter which details on tactics that companies use to make people believe that their products hold the key to their eternal happiness. The book highlights the tactics used by the system to keep consumers buying more and more unnecessary shit - substantiating my view that seasonal fashion was invented to keep people feeding their money to the system by making them feel inadequate for not having ‘the latest trends’. It is not the poor who society should feel bad for, we should feel bad for those caught up in a cycle of ‘work-watch-spend’: work all day, sit in front of advertisements that convince them that their lives are shit without material possessions, spend their hard earned money on supporting the industries which ultimately feed their insecurity. Of course we all like the brief buzz that comes when you buy something new, but that feeling fades fast. I’m talking to fellow people who have never been spoiled or given money for nothing when I say that it’s really worth looking into anticonsumerism to make yourself feel better about not being ‘blessed’ with daddy’s credit card (I just need to find a good book on it that isn’t as environmentally centred as this one is).
