Simple Living Is The Perfect Antidote To Mindless Consumerism.

In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush urged Americans not to be intimidated by the “war on terror,” but to get back to our lives of shopping, flying and “business as usual.”

The dubious wisdom of this directive aside, it seems to me that the average American consumer doesn’t need much encouragement.

Take our annual “Black Friday” extravaganza. Who is fueling whose agenda?

In 2014, store profits peaked around $50.9 billion –an 11 percent dip from the previous year. Last year’s profits dipped a little more as more shoppers opted to shop online. But with stores opening earlier each year, and people literally dying to get in, binge shopping is alive and well – a telling testament to our addiction to consumption.

Even those of us with an environmentally conscious disposition tend to get sucked into this cultural maelstrom of consumption and, before we know it, become as addicted and lost as the shopaholic in the next aisle.

The other day, I signed into my Amazon account and took a gander at my purchase history. I did it out of curiosity, but I’m not returning for a while. Why? Because it irks me that Amazon won’t allow me to delete my purchase history. I am not a “consumer junkie.” Yet, I sure felt like one when I clicked on this link.

I don’t need to be reminded of what I’ve (even frugally) purchased through Amazon over the years. Do you?

And as for that “little something” a customer purchases and later is profoundly embarrassed about: Oh well, there it is like a smirking gargoyle permanently ensconced in the purchase history!

Apple Inc. is no better. If I delete an app on my iPhone, where does it migrate to? To the “Purchased Items Landfill,” of course – just in case I change my mind, decide to reload it and spend more frivolous money I don’t have.

Does it ever end?

It doesn’t. We’re spinning uncontrollably in a vortex of rampant consumerism and there isn’t an escape hatch. At least, none that I am aware of.

So if, like me, digital consumerism exasperates you, unless you’re prepared to close out your Facebook, App Store, Amazon and email accounts, ditch your smartphone and become a wandering Bedouin in the Arabian Desert, you’re just going to have to suck it up and get on with it.

But is there a way to mindfully navigate these consumer traps? Yes, through the power of human agency and the art of simple living.

By human agency I mean taking charge of who and what controls our mind, informs our daily choices, enters our stream of consciousness and ultimately determines the core values by which we live.

We have the power to choose whether to be hapless consumer junkies or to mindfully engage in the marketplace as discerning and responsible shoppers – not impressionable kids who go into a store with a list of three items and leave with seven!

We can be well-intentioned shoppers who buy a useful and needed item on Amazon, eBay or wherever, but then get lulled into browsing the sidebar “accessory” items or the “Customers-who-bought-this-item-also-purchased” section.

Scream! Get the hell out of there – now! You don’t need the wicker chair that would be such a cozy companion for your new writing desk! Don’t dither and dally so “they” can dupe you into unnecessary purchases or play havoc with your most basic of human instincts – desire.

Because they will and they’ll suck it dry until you’re spent, broke and incapable of recognizing who you are.

The art of simple living doesn’t mean wholesale divestment or disengagement from a materialist lifestyle. We all, to varying degrees, live a materialist lifestyle. We have the things we use on a daily basis; we buy more of these things when we think we need them and we have a legion of reasons to justify (or rationalize) why we need the creature comforts we have.

My suggestion here is to periodically do a little moral inventory on the things we own and consider indispensable.

Do we really need them? Do I have miscellaneous flotsam in a storage unit that has been sitting there for a year or more? Do I absolutely need the iPhone 6 or am I doing just fine with the 4S? And who the heck needs an inane Apple Watch with micro apps? 

Why does my family have four cars in the driveway when we used to get by (comfortably) with two? Why am I spending 45 minutes on a simple Amazon purchase, when this should only have taken five? Has gaming and gambling taken over my life?

It is high time we stripped our lives of the addictive, consumer crap piling up at our doors – the ones to our homes and human dignity.

Until Amazon, Apple Inc. and the like grow up and give us the option to delete our purchase histories, I would advise resisting the urge to browse these links. If we don’t, we’ll end up back on the whirligig of mindless spending. And that, sadly, is another deathblow to the human spirit.

And now with e-commerce giant Alibaba cleaning up in China, particularly during their Spring Festival shopping spree, there really seems little or no hope to slow the march of rampant consumerism.

So It’s Time… 

Time to get over ourselves and stop lining the pockets of the megastore giants who drive the slave wage industries and sweat shops of our developing world. 

Time to take the steps we know we can take to restore a more integrated sense of who we are in an elegant and expanding universe awash in natural abundance.

Cover Photo: Christopher Michel (Creative Commons)