This is the first of what I hope to be an irregular series of quick meditations on what I’m calling the “personal economy,” inspired by E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful.
Despite soaring gas prices, this Fourth of July weekend saw a record number of travelers on the road. I was one of them, on my way to a family picnic. Enough has been said about the ills of consumption, and though I agree, I’m too complicit to indulge in that chorus. Let’s admit that life consumes. We require at least water and food, and there are a host of other things that give us comfort. We all draw that famous line between “needs” and “wants” differently, to the point that the spectrum looks like heavily-scored bar code. I see no use in making an argument for a universal border. Some people have greater needs. Once those are satisfied, they may want more or less than their neighbors.
What I propose is using consumption to learn the nature of the consumer, and if necessary, alter it. We could argue that a nation is the whole of what it consumes. Nothing can be produced out of thin air, and so a particular consumption underlies all products and activities. The size and health of the population depends on what they eat. Their industries, on what they desire, and what raw materials they can get their hands on. Given that we consume certain things, much of our lives have to go toward ensuring that we can continue to consume those things: holding and developing land, coaxing the products forth, tending to relationships that support the process.
I bet if you told me the things an unknown nation consumed and to what extent, I could come up with a pretty fair estimation of its national character. The same is true of individuals. What we pay attention to, the acts we undertake and the goals we have in mind, are who we are. The food we eat composes our bodies, and our habits shape them. The books and media we take in influence our opinions. If we want to consume more, we have to make a more strenuous effort to ensure we have the means. If production is what we output in terms of material goods and actions performed on others’ behalf, productive activity usually takes on a type and intensity that supports what we plan to consume later. There are exceptions—trust-fund babies who gorge themselves and do little in return, but even they have to make sure their well keeps drawing, and a glance at their consumptive habits still reveals quite a bit about the individuals. There seems almost an inverse correlation between how much a human consumes and how much they produce.
Tempting as it is to rail against the metastatic members of society, it’s helpful to keep in mind that even a lower-middle class lifestyle in the United States seems gluttonous to most people on this planet. I think the real power in examining consumption is as a fulcrum for personal change.
What do I need, or think I need? What do I want in addition, and how badly? I consume food and water, fuel, clothing, electricity, guitar strings, boxing gloves, books, mountains of cardboard and plastic packaging, spare parts, and many other things worth listing in detail to myself. Of the essentials, I could probably get by on much less food and fuel, of a simpler quality, than I do. Beyond the literal, I also consume the time, energy, and attention of my family and friends, and hopefully, produce some value in return. That means my job, my activities, the way I relate to others, most of my life is devoted to securing my wants and needs.
There isn’t just a quantity dimension, but a quality one. The things I need to do—and the peripherals I produce and consume—to keep each individual resource flowing can differ sharply, depending on if I’m looking for guitar strings or knitting supplies. An hour spent riding dirt bikes has a different consumption pattern to bring it about than an hour spent watching TV.
What are we, if not the whole of our thoughts and actions, and the places we press our attention? As living things, we have to consume, and we are shaped by what we take in, be it ideas, entertainment, chili cheese fries, spare batteries, dog poop baggies, a saxophone, ocean views, a sympathetic ear, or printer ink.
But we’re also shaped by the things we do to ensure that we can keep consuming these resources. I’m no fan of wanton consumerism, but it’s clear I’m no ascetic. If I could call for a different attitude toward consumption in my society, it wouldn’t be a self-righteous elimination. It would be for people to list, in cumbersome detail, all of their material, social, intellectual, and spiritual needs and desires to the last nut and bolt, and then to become aware of the things they do week-in and week-out to support those patterns of consumption. If anything makes us miserable, the answer may lie in consuming less of one, more of another, or something different entirely. It may lie in finding a new way to ensure we can always acquire those want-needs. If the character of nations and people lies in a survey of what they consume, it seems the first step toward better health is to become aware of exactly what that is, and what we inevitably give up in return.