An American bumper sticker from the 1980s used to read, “He who dies with the most toys wins”. While this was probably intended as a satirical send-up of modern-day consumerist priorities, it seems that many people have adopted this as their goal in the game of life.

As we acquire material goods, our lives become more cluttered. A significant chunk of this mess is the proliferation of technological gadgets that seem to need regular updating, and which shortly after being introduced onto the market become regarded as an essential element of modern life.

Today, for many people, shopping has evolved from being a necessary chore to one of the primary leisure activities in Western countries like Australia and New Zealand. There is a common perception that consumerism is innate and that the love of shopping is hard-wired into people: unfortunately, history suggests otherwise.

Moulding public opinion

Edward Bernays is a little-known figure today but was highly influential in giving birth to the modern consumer era. A nephew of Sigmund Freud living in New York, during the 1920s he pioneered the field of public relations and would be known today as a spin doctor.

Americans were traditionally frugal and self-reliant, with consumerism some way down their list of priorities. On behalf of big business, Bernays took on the task of orientating people’s attitudes towards self-gratification. Throughout his life, he remained a firm believer in the necessity for mass social engineering by an elite for the good of humanity.

After World War II, the US saw a major ramping-up of the consumer culture from austere wartime conditions. Consuming was portrayed as a patriotic act. Items such as fridges and cars grew in size and suburbia started to sprawl. In 1955, economist Victor Lebow was famously quoted as stating in a magazine article, “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate.”

Consumer psychology

As a society, we have taken on a consumer self-identity that has eclipsed many other underdeveloped potentials and possibilities. In some cases, we take part largely for the thrill of the purchase rather than the pleasure of its use, and a lot of items are left to gather dust. For many shoppers, the consumption ritual provides a much-needed stimulus and serves as a substitute for real meaning and purpose.

An orientation towards possessions is usually coupled with an impoverishment in interpersonal relationships and a corresponding lack of interest in spiritual or religious practices. Consumers tend to receive their cues from external stimuli and, in addition to “keeping up with the Joneses”, will often emulate those they see as being higher in the social hierarchy. What were previously seen as luxuries are increasingly viewed as necessities, and this may drive the choice to take on extra paid overtime at work.

In one study, University of Newcastle psychologist Shaun Saunders found that materialists are on the whole less psychologically healthy than people interested in a simple lifestyle. They were found to be more susceptible to depression, tending towards anger and generally less satisfied with their lives than others. Less concerned about the environment, they are also more likely to be conformist. This is backed up by previous research from the US that also links materialism to depression.

Much blame can be placed on the cycle of endless dissatisfaction, a theme that can be traced back to the 1929 article Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied by Charles Kettering, head of General Motors Research. The person wanting to stay up to date can never put their feet up. As a species, as we become more “civilised”, we also experience an increased susceptibility towards restlessness. If we are indolently relaxing, there is a tendency to feel guilty about not working or busying ourselves with projects like renovating.

Advertising and credit

Of all the elements most responsible for maintaining the consumer status quo, perhaps advertising comes ahead of the rest. In addition to its strategy of applying persuasion that often targets the subconscious, the prevalence and persistence of advertising in the media and throughout our visual environment reinforces in the collective psyche the idea of shopping.

In the new-found “tween” market, ie between the ages of eight and 12, companies are targeting children’s increasing disposable incomes and the “nag factor”, where they will keep pestering their parents to buy an item. Children forced to grow up too quickly via adult stereotypes are effectively losing part of their childhood. They are persuaded to consume via peer pressure and have their insecurity buttons pressed; exposure to ideal body shapes in the media, for example, can cause body image problems.

A recent report from the UK think-tank Compass, The Advertising Effect, states that children under the age of 12 have not yet developed the cognitive ability to recognise when they are being marketed to. Following on from this, Compass believes that advertising to under-12s should be banned. Also contentious is the advertising of junk food during children’s programming, an issue on which successive Australian and New Zealand governments have declined to take action.

The Compass report goes further than typical “hot button” issues, controversially challenging the way in which our mental environment has become increasingly colonised by ads and calling for a ban on advertising in public places.

Credit cards are another lynchpin of the consumer system, facilitating a large amount of expenditure within the economy that would otherwise not take place. Today, credit-card debt has risen to AU$35 billion in Australia (averaging AU$3250 per cardholder) and NZ$5 billion in New Zealand (NZ$2300 average). Certain personality types are addictively drawn towards maxing out their credit cards, a pattern that can get out of control, particularly when several cards are involved.

Environmental consequences

It can be sobering to remember that, ultimately, the massive global flows of resources such as oil, coal, iron ore, bauxite and timber is largely taking place to meet consumer demand. Global per capita consumption of natural resources tripled between 1960 and 2006, rising faster than population; when combined, both of these upward curves have a worrying multiplier effect.

We are well aware of countries such as India and China rapidly making the transition from rural peasant societies to urban populations that aspire to a Western standard of living. In understanding what this means, one of the most useful models is the Ecological Footprint, a concept that originated in the 1990s. It measures the quantity of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources consumed by a human population and to absorb its wastes.

Under this model, the Earth is currently in an “overshoot” position where more of the planet is required to support its population than is actually available and the deficit is growing. The US, with its insatiable consumer appetite, has a footprint of 9ha and if everyone lived like Americans we would need five Earths to support ourselves. Australia is not far behind on 3.9 Earths, with New Zealand requiring 4.2. Online personal ecological footprint calculators are available, but are often flawed due to their lack of attention to the non-energy consumer spending that makes up the bulk of the total.

Two other important considerations are the carbon and water footprints. Consumerism is a key driver of climate change and it’s important to remember that the embodied water and energy in all the goods and services bought by a household usually greatly exceeds those associated with its direct consumption of electricity, fuels and water.

This phenomenon was brought into focus by the Consuming Australia report produced by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the University of Sydney. Research found that, on average, every dollar of consumption in the economy was responsible for 720g of greenhouse emissions and 28 litres of water. The largest footprints generally occurred in the most affluent suburbs of major cities where the disposable income was the highest.

Finally, there is the major issue of waste, which is generally no accident. Planned obsolescence, a syndrome under which products fall apart or wear out unnecessarily fast, dates back to the American consumer heyday of the 1950s and is becoming ever more blatant. Perceived obsolescence, whereby the item is replaced while still usable, is another factor. Clothing, driven by the power of fashion advertising, is the most obvious example. Electronic items, especially computers, fall behind in the speed stakes because of the memory demands of constant updating of software, and are replaced regularly.

The short animated film The Story of Stuff, produced by US activist Annie Leonard, exposes the most dysfunctional aspects of the consumer system, making the point, that being linear, it cannot be sustained indefinitely in a finite world. We need to morph it into something circular where the waste products become feedstocks. Despite recycling rates continuing to rise, and many countries having product stewardship laws requiring end-of-life take-back, The Story of Stuff points out that far more waste is generated during production than at the landfill stage. The problem is that this production waste is usually invisible to the general public.

Searching for an alternative

One understandable response to these issues is for the consumer to become active and turn purchasing into a political activity. Under the banner of ethical (or green) consumerism, such shoppers may choose a product that is organic, has less packaging or was produced not far from the place of purchase. Alternatively, they might look at companies’ records on animal testing, pollution, greenwash and labour rights and try to support locally owned businesses.

On the whole, scaled-up versions of ethical consumerism have been found to have a greater impact than individual voluntarism, one remarkable example being the growing number of Fairtrade Towns that are now springing up throughout the world, particularly the UK, and which now include the Melbourne suburb of Yarra. Fairtrade Towns are communities “in which people and organisations use their everyday choices to increase sales of Fairtrade products and bring about positive change for farmers and workers in developing countries” (from www.faitradetowns.org).