Got A Minute?

I’ve been thinking about getting a new car.  It’s been five years since I purchased the Volvo CX90 I currently drive.  Now that is not, most folks would concur, a long time on the road for a well-kept Volvo, I know, but a new car would be nice to own, anyway.  Speaking of bringing things up-to-date, I have wondered if my big-screen television is big enough.  Oh, it seems plenty big for our household’s purposes (baseball games, news programs, and PBS offerings), but others I know have bigger televisions than ours.  Also, I think I’d like the latest iPhone even though the model I use now works fine but is a few generations older than what is available.  Not only that, my wife and I have been thinking about upgrades around the house, you know, keeping current.  Carpeting is getting a little washed out, windows have seen better days, some furniture has become weary owing to twenty years of service, and we’ve been thinking about installing a water feature in the backyard, maybe a small fountain, something bubbling from a stack of artificial rocks, nothing essential but nonetheless something worth having.  Then there is the washer and dryer to consider.  Yes, they still work just fine, but one of these days one or both will go kerflooey, and then where will we be?  I keep thinking that our appliances cannot last much longer and ought to be replaced.  Owning a home means one must always consider enhancements.  “It’s always something;” that’s the line the guy at the hardware store says every time I go in for something.

Though my wife and I entertain purchasing possibilities, it occurs to me that my urges toward consumerism might be something close to an addiction.  Similar to preparing a meatloaf and mashed potato dinner on a winter evening, buying stuff is comforting.  Briefly.  But then one usually needs more consoling, another purchase, more stuff to fuel the high of defeating ennui.  To some degree, many of us have oniomania, an obsession to buy things even if we do not need things.  Pretty sure I have a mild case of that disorder.  Oh, well, we do live in a consumeristic culture, so in some ways I am conditioned to buying stuff just by being a targeted consumer in present-day America.

And, oh boy, are we ever marinated in commercial messages each day.  By some estimates, each of us exposed to 5000 adverts daily, probably more, depending on where we live and how much time we spend online.  Television spots, radio ads, online adverts, cold call telephone pitches, billboards, feather flag signage, blimps, airplanes dragging commercial messages, guys standing on corners twirling cardboard signs, email pleas: all means of imploring us to buy, buy, buy.  Buy now.  Don’t walk; run to the nearest shopping mall and buy our stuff.  You need it.  You want it.  “Call now!  But wait.  If you call now, you will receive an additional thingamajig for an added fee.”  If one includes charitable causes, the distractions multiple and become maddening.  “Change your will.”  “Donate your car.”  “Shall we round up that purchase for a contribution to the Children’s Hospital?”  “Save the whales.”  “The fundraising deadline is just hours away, so help us reach our goals.”  Is there no end to aggressive, nauseating begging?

The engine that powers consumerism is not sustainable, of course, but the advertisements keep coming at a madcap pace, and our over-the-top consuming demands abuses our environment and climate in the process.  There is a limit to how much stuff we can buy at Costco because our homes and garages can only store so much.  Our world is finite, of course, and consumerism depends on more, bigger, better—demands that have no limits.  One can stuff only so much rubbish into a can.  One can drive only one Lexus at a time.  One can only use one burial plot.  We are not sexy enough, not influential enough, not even close to up-to-date enough, and the antidote to all these shortcomings is to buy, buy, buy, and buy some more.  Don’t be left out.  That is, increasing consumption of goods and services is socio-economically desirable and good for the economy even if it does not make a good deal of practical sense.

Nonetheless, because we have yet to be cured of our addictions, my wife and I recently attended the local home show.  As we moved through the aisles of displays we were buttonholed by more than one marketer with the familiar opener, “Got a Minute?”  These sales reps were pitching smart phones, cable television hookups, window replacements, hot tubs, high-tech gizmos, all varieties of goods and services that we did not need.  But, yes, we had a minute.  After all, we paid to attend a home show and should have expected to stroll the gauntlet, subjecting ourselves to full-force, good old American hard sell.

And that got me thinking.  The home show is a microcosm of America.  All the ingredients squeezed into the Tacoma Dome.  Buyers.  Sellers.  Hustlers.  Gulls.  Dreams.  Visa and Mastercard.  Goods.  Services.  All of us looking for a commercial fix.  The whole shebang, the lot of us leading “lives of quiet desperation.”