Consumption as a spiritual quest
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Shanghai Daily, December 16, 2011
Liquidity
Bauman coins the term liquid modernity to make sense of the constant changes that undermine all notions of durability.
As Bauman observes, "Transience has replaced durability at the top of the value table. What is valued today is the ability to be on the move, to travel light and at short notice. Power is measured by the speed with which responsibilities can be escaped. Who accelerates, wins; who stays put, loses."
In consumer society this transience manifests itself in the "plenitude of consumer choice," in the society's constant urge to create new products to be admired and possessed.
Take the latest obsession with the iPad, the possession of which is suggested by advertisers to be something of a spiritual quest.
In this instance, the vacuity of conspicuous consumption has been rebranded as cutting edge, revolutionary, idealistic.
This apotheosis of novelty has been made possible with the destruction of old communal life.
Ultimate consumption can flourish only in the anonymity of urban existence where an individual can be judged by the logo on her/his handbag.
In writing about his American experience earlier last century, renowned Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong was struck by - notwithstanding its material comforts - the sameness of America. He traveled in similar cars on similar highways to hotels with the similar setups.
He found shifting residence in America as easy as moving to a hotel. All can be fixed up with a phone call.
He was nostalgic for his old family home back China, the old plane tree, on which was carved his name.
"I am not accustomed to those over-illuminated American houses that can be taken in in one glance. Living in such rooms you easily develop a kind of illusory confidence that what you see is the world all over," Fei wrote.
Fei thought that this outlook enables Westerners to view the world as nothing but resources yet to be exploited, while Oriental people live in fear of the unknown, burdened with obligations not only to others, but also to their posterity, and their ancestors.
Unlike Chinese who tended to view the reigns of legendary kings of Yu, Shun and Yao as ideal states of government, in the fluidity of modernity, the past is constantly overcome and jettisoned as inferior, while the present is perceived as more desirable, more progressive, and more developed, with something still better in store for us.
With the enshrinement of market forces, sometimes known as market fundamentalism, comes the mandate for growth, and consumption.
The current Chinese dictionaries still define consumption as an act to satisfy needs.
Needs have since been replaced by desires.
"Now it is desire's turn to be discarded. It has outlived its usefulness: having brought consumer addiction to its present state, it can no more set the pace. A more powerful, and above all more versatile stimulant is needed to keep consumer demand on a level with consumer offer," writes Bauman.
Consumption
When consumption is purged of the last impediments of "reality," full credit can be given to its pleasures.
This kind of consumption is based on the aesthetization of everyday life, as encapsulated in numerous signs, logos, and images that symbolize "new" products.
The obsession with LV bags can be enormously emancipatory, for it shows the owner can afford to be freed from practical function.
As Bauman observes, the new consumers "live from attraction to attraction, from temptation to temptation, from sniffing out one tidbit to searching for another, from swallowing one bait to fishing around for another."
When consumption is elevated from the level of meeting needs to the level of wish-fulfillment, the compulsion to consume runs into the dead-end of "never wilting excitation."
Bauman's incisive and cool-headed analysis of consumption has considerable realistic applications.
For a nation committed to growth as its ultimate objective, a model citizen can only be one evincing trained sensitivity to the exhortations of advertisements, and pursuing consumables, tacitly inflating demand.
The trouble is, the earth is finite.
As a scholar asks in "Public fuming over foul air finally gets attention" (Shanghai Daily, December 12), "Growth should benefit people. When it harms their health, what's the point of growth anyway?"
