From Bruce K. Alexander THE GLOBALIZATION OF ADDICTION – A STUDY IN POVERTY OF THE SPIRIT (Pages 250-252)
Free market society requires the sacrifice of psychosocial integration
for the benefits of wealth. The resulting poverty of the spirit leave each
person, to a greater or lesser degree desperate for something that will provide
a sense of meaning and belonging. At the
same time that the free market dislocates people, it proffers pseudosolutions
for the misery of dislocation. As
corporations know that affluent people’s real material needs are already
satisfied, they peddle a multitude of consumer products that are designed to
fill the void of dislocation: enormous house, modish clothing, personal beauty products,
lottery tickets, electronic games and gadgets, gas-guzzling cares, sexual
enhancements, exotic foods, weight-loss schemes, and on and on. Because these products can only partly or
temporarily fill the psychosocial void, they are difficult to consume in
moderation. When they are consumed in
excess, their ever-increasing environmental and social costs must be pushed to
the periphery of consciousness, as in addictive denial.
If we take the time to really get to know the overweight
couple taking the four-wheel-drive car to the superstore to stock up on superfluous
merchandise in apparent ignorance of the environmental costs, we will see that
their motivations originate in the same addictive dynamics as clinically
diagnosed ‘shopaholics’. This couple
truly needs to consume excessively. No
matter how much they buy, they never get the feeling of personal satisfaction
and social importance that they are seeking.
They need to own that lavish home-entertainment center, because if they
could not dull their wits with incessant television and other entertainments,
they might become horrified by the state of the world and the role of their own
country in it. Their fragile, but essential, sense of the
rightness of things as they are could be shattered. Besides, keeping up with the media really helps
them to participate in conversations with their media-savvy friends. They need the big car to feel safe as they
drive, because people drive these days as if nobody cares whether they live or
die. In addition, having those other
vehicles in the garage for when they might be needed gives them a sense of
freedom, and without freedom what would they have, really? They need to buy materials to expand their
already excessive house, because it will then express the unique sense of taste
that they have so much trouble getting people to notice in other ways. They need more high-protein food and medical
care for the two dogs than is available to most families in the Third
World. Frankly, those precious little
yappers have a bigger place in their lives than most of the people they know in
the First World, never mind the Third.
They consume energy with the same avidity that they consume
material goods. After all, people who
have worked hard to put their money in the bank need some kind of recognition
and reward. If it seems they have every electrical
appliance and electronic gadget imaginable in their house, all flashing,
whirring, heating, and cooling at once, it is only their due. Besides, hydro-electricity is still cheap.
They have their separate needs too. He needs to have all sorts of esoteric tools
that he doesn’t use now, because it will enable him to serve a real function in
the community when he can eventually afford to retire from his job, finish fixing
up the house, get away from the TV, and then turn to what has most fascinated
him, in the background, all his life.
She knows he will not have time to master any significant portion of
that complicated stuff, but she senses his yearning for a sense of worth, knows
his sensitivity to criticism on this topic, and values the stability of their
marriage. Besides, if she is considerate
about his stuff, he won’t be mean about her little indulgences.
She needs to keep the fridge packed with meat and vegetables
to feel like a good wife and mother, although most of it gets thrown out after
a while. It’s just that it’s impossible
to say when family or friends might show up unexpectedly for dinner or when she
might get back to regular cooking.
Besides, vegetable these days go all spotty; it seems like the
restaurants buy all the good stuff.
Plus, the clerks at the supermarket are so nice and chatty they almost
seem like good friends. And isn’t there
just a good feeling knowing you’re all stocked up? Taken together, all their scarcely used
merchandise constitutes the material scaffolding for the construction of a
fulfilling life that they genuinely need – but then, somehow never gets
built.
Of course, they do not consume every product in grossly
wasteful or addictive ways. And – you must understand – they already know about
the environment and they care. They
recycle. They only consume the products
that satisfy real needs, and view the inexplicable, overconsumption of others
with bitter disdain. They would not buy
things that are environmentally destructive unless they were really necessary,
as a buffer against depression and the other ravages of dislocation. They are not greedy, evil, or stupid. Rather, they are desperate to be recognized,
to belong, to have a purpose.
They have been told throughout their lives that they can achieve
these goals if they just purchase the right merchandise. There are as much victims of dislocation as the
junkies who sleep in abandoned buildings.
I would imagine that they are also just as loved by the Christian God
for they, too, are poor in spirit – even if their oversized house is stuffed with
enough merchandise to enable some homeless, starving people to survive, and
even if their addictions are, collectively, more environmentally and socially
destructive than those of the much smaller number of heroin junkies. They suffer by comparison with drug-addicted
people in another way, too: their plight seems more hopeless. Although there is no way that they will be
able to buy a cure for their dislocation, they are doomed to keep trying
because so many voices are encouraging them to make another trip to the
mall.
Many affluent people have a smaller number of grossly
wasteful habits than the composite couple described here, but they are part of
environmental madness too. It matters little
whether this style of life is formally labelled ‘addiction’ or not. The essential facts are that the fundamental motivation
to relieve dislocation is the same as the motivation for addiction to drugs or anything
else, and this couple’s destructive way of life is as intractable as any other
kind of addiction, even now, as the polar ice caps melt.
Wasteful consumption is essential for the survival of a
bloated economy. There must be affluent
people to consume the products of the factories as wastefully as possible so
that more can be manufactured, because corporations that do not grow must
die. The eternal expansion of the free-market
society requires that people learn new needs and try the new products that are
continually being invented for their consumption. The composite couple described here must be
able to believe the barrage of propaganda that incessantly asserts that the way
they consume is not madness, but is ultimately for the best, in some deeper
sense. Multiplied by millions, they form
a perfect vicious cycle. They work compulsively; they consume compulsively; the
gross domestic product rises; the environment deteriorates; the poor get
poorer; everyone feels dislocated; they work more compulsively; they consume
more compulsively, the gross domestic product rises further; [and on, and on].
It is not innate wickedness or stupidity that is destroying
our planetary ecosystem, so much as it is the increasingly desperate response
of countless people to the dislocation of their lives.
