Getting and Spending

Note: I realize that to say anything positive about materialism risks criticism. I am aware of the broad animus directed against consumerist culture. Many have argued, as Herbert Marcuse said, that “people recognize themselves in their commodities” and “find their souls” in them, and, as a result, often, experience alienation and mental inertia. The following essay is offered simply as an exploration, an inquiry from a less condemnatory perspective. “There is,” says Leonard Cohen, “a crack in everything./That’s how the light gets in.

I never knew just how or when the sale was conducted and finalized. All I knew was that one day they began arriving. The twenty-four volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, bound in gold-printed brown leather. They were for my brother Dennis and me, Dad explained; to help us in school, and just to look through when we want to know about anything—and Dad emphasized the word “anything.” But they were not shelved in our bedroom; no, they were prominently displayed in the family-room bookcase, immediately visible to even the most casual entrant. Only later did I understand that, for Dad, possessing and displaying the most recent edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica announced to anyone entering the room his pride at having “made it,” his long and determined and, finally, successful rise from Depression-era poverty to comfortably middle-class status.

Undoubtedly, had that dour son of Norwegian immigrants, sociologist Thorstein Veblen, entered the family room, he would have said, “Ah ha; here’s an instance of conspicuous consumption. There, sitting on those shelves, Philistinism pronounces itself, the dialect of socioeconomic class speaking in its distinctive materialistic accent.” It’s true that the purchase, while making the Britannica conveniently accessible, was conspicuously unnecessary; the school and public libraries had several sets of encyclopedias, general and specialized. And it’s true that Dad conspicuously displayed the volumes. But I also think it’s true that any Veblenesque imputation that Dad had succumbed to conspicuous materialism would be incorrect: while purchasing and showcasing the Britannica may have been self-indulgent, it was hardly immoderate or profligate—a sign perhaps, of social standing, but certainly not a substitute for his love.

Indeed, I wonder why the concept of materialism carries the implacably negative connotation it does. Why, I wonder, is it considered such a profanation? Just what, exactly, is so wrong, so vulgar, about buying and consuming things? Is it really the degrading, stupefying idolatry it is made out to be?

Materialism, we are told, is our bogeyman, our gremlin, our ogre under the bridge, our failing, our sin. And sheepishly we assume a guilty posture, genuflect and beat our breasts before the withering accusation, and ask, as did the prisonkeeper in Philippi of Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved.” “Yes, yes,” we say; “it’s true, I like to shop, to buy things. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” And having acknowledged our sensibility, having disavowed our participation, on we go, getting and spending, and we are deemed incurably acquisitive, possessed, supposedly, by the need to possess.

But consider: things always signify in excess of their purpose, always mean more than that for which they were designed. The philosopher of technology, Andrew Feenberg, distinguishes between the “functional rationality” of a thing, its “function or aim or outcome depending on its arrangement of parts,” and its “social meaning,” the sociocultural “context of its use: how it is understood, interpreted, its signifying component.” We create that “social meaning.” No value inheres in things except that which we give it. We make things mean. We have to. Procuring the means of making meaning is part of who and what we are. Paul Lawrence, Harvard professor of organizational behavior, identifies the “need to acquire” as an innate human drive. And Jeff Mason, writing in the blog Talking Philosophy, describes human beings as irrepressible meaning makers “who cannot help but create and then leave meanings on everything that pertains to a human world.”

And consider: do we not make that meaning to do what human beings have always done, what, perhaps, we have been evolutionarily driven to do—announce ourselves, narrate and perform ourselves, for someone, even if that someone is ourselves? Why else do we paint our houses and mow our lawns and participate in marches and demonstrations and vote and pray and attend PTA meetings and wear cheesehead hats and smile at strangers and hug our children and take them to Disney World? And given the quantum semantics of things, their multiplicity of meanings, are they not well suited to the task of narrating ourselves to the gazing world? Are they not emblems of our doing and being? Why assume we are duped by commercial interests, coerced and victimized by the stuff-makers and thing-producers? Could we not say they serve our interests, not we theirs? Have they not given us a means to express who we are, to utter wherein our conception of ourselves and our accomplishments lie?

Consider even this: could it be possible that the things we buy and consume can connect us? Historian Daniel Boorstin certainly thinks so, calling them “symbols which hold men (sic) together” rather than keep them apart. How often, I wonder, is the significance of our consumerism masked by the simplistic statistics of the what and how much? How much of what we buy is intended for another, to meet a desire or need, or to give a tangible token of care and concern and nurture, or simply to gladden? Could it not be said that in such instances consumerism has a moral function? Even Aquinas taught that things are good in themselves.

Surely, someone will say, materialism can be vulgar. Vulgarity, however, is a matter of taste, and matters of taste, in addition to being irresolvably disputable, continually change. The waltz was once considered vulgar. So was whole-wheat bread. So were Shakespeare and Chaucer. Perhaps it will be argued that the vulgarity lies in materialism’s excessive desire for things. Define “excessive.” Excessive compared to what? Would we, like Thoreau, winnow our needs to shelter, food, fuel, and clothing, and those to levels minimally utilitarian? Does excessive materialism consist in an endangering, not-to-be-denied compulsion to spend far beyond the arc of one’s means, perhaps in disregard for the financial health of one’s family? If so, I suggest that, at issue, is the deeper, medical or psychological problem of addiction for which materialism is a surface emblem only.

What does it matter, finally, whether Dad bought the Encyclopedia Britannica to demonstrate his commitment to education, his concern for my brother’s and my success in school, or his pride at having achieved middle-class status. Are they not of a piece? And even if not, why should the last reason be considered less worthy than the others? Do we still resonate to some Calvinistic need for self-abasement? Would we be some latter-day Simeon Stylites, perching on a pillar for 36 years, seeking sainthood for our asceticism, our self-renunciation? Would not such an act of self-display be stealth pride?

Thoreau urged us to “Simplify, simplify,” to “cultivate poverty like a garden herb,” should we wish to enter the chastely austere “higher laws” of the world of thought. There is a kind of nobility in that, perhaps; maybe even a kind of human flourishing, but, I think, only from a rather limited point of view. For most, poverty is not ennobling; it is punishingly caustic. And as for the realm of ideas, consider University of Florida professor James B. Twitchell’s take on our propensity for getting and spending: it’s not about consuming things so much as it is “about consuming meaning, about socializing, about dreaming.” I suspect even Thoreau would have to agree there is nothing shallow or demeaning in that.

Scenes from the Mall

The Jordan Creek Town Center in Des Moines is the largest shopping mall—scratch that—the largest “retail park and lifestyle center” in Iowa and the fourth largest in the Midwest: two million square feet, 164 stores plus sundry kiosks, 20 movie screens, 25 restaurants and eateries, and anchored by Dillards, Younkers, and Scheels All Sports. Opened in August 2004, the Jordan Creek Town Center is comprised of three districts: the shopping district, which contains a decidedly upscale two-level enclosed mall done up in a streetscape design; the lake district, which contains walking trails, a 3.5 acre lake with boardwalk, an amphitheater, and several fine-dining restaurants; and the village district, which contains several big-box retailers like Best Buy, PetCo, Old Navy, and Costco, along with any number of smaller establishments. Until February 22, 2011, I had never been to this 19th largest mall in the United States, and the newest of the nineteen.

On that date I had an appointment with a Des Moines endocrinologist. Now, going to see the doctor, even the family physician, Hunter Thompsons me with fear and loathing, and being scheduled to see a specialist—well, let’s just say I’d rather be a piñata at a baseball bat convention. So, I asked my wife Kathy, a registered nurse and the best hand-holder I know, to accompany me. Kathy has her hair done at Mini and Max’s in the Jordan Creek Mall, so, to save herself an extra trip, she scheduled a hair appointment after my poking, prodding, and blood drawing session. I was reluctant to go to the mall, but she knows my weaknesses all too well: “There’s a Barnes and Noble across from the hair salon, and a Starbucks and Godiva Chocolatier at the food court, and big comfortable leather chairs all over the place,” she told me. That sealed the deal for me—that, and the fact that, unlike all the other times I go to bookstores, she assured me she would not demand that I turn my credit card over to her before I entered. Some six and a half years after its hoopla-ed opening, I would finally get to savor the “shopping experience” of the Jordan Creek Town Center mall, a citadel, the promotional literature says, to “fashion and lifestyle.”

It is easy to criticize shopping malls, easy to toss off dreary Marxian bromides like “commodity fetishism,” “reified experience,” and “ideological mystification;” easy to call those who frequent them “cultural dupes” in thrall to “narcissistic consumerism;” easy to pronounce malls a culturally fabricated space of jostling signifiers through which empty selves wander and wonder, seeking to fill the emptiness, the lack, the radiant, hungering desire for a fulfillment their vacant, everyday lives do not provide. It is easy to say that places like the Jordan Creek Town Center are nothing more than a fantasy of consumerist empowerment; a false consciousness of choice and autonomy; a kind of George Lucas-like Industrial Light and Magic experience that holds at arm’s length, unopened, the sealed book that we are; an emporium of eye-glazing wonders for people who possess a need for possessions to hide from themselves their lack of self-possession. It is easy to say all this; the reality, however, for me, as I spent an hour wandering through the mall, was less grandly conceptual, less a pontificating academic voice in a whirlwind, more a thin, prosaic slipstream, a bleak liturgy accented with sadness.

Outside Younkers, an old man sat in a wheelchair, asleep, head in hand. Someone ambling past the counters and displays inside, perhaps stopping to sample perfume or try on some trousers, had left him there. At the first kiosk I encountered a young woman was selling Rosetta Stone foreign language software. She told me it creates “an immersive environment” and has “really cool voice recognition technology.” “How many languages do you speak,” I asked. “Oh, none,” she said; “I just sell the DVDs. I got enough trouble with English.” And she laughed. At another kiosk selling T-shirts, the young salesman sat scrutinizing his fingernails with exquisite care. At the next, selling sunglasses, the young saleswoman was texting. In the Godiva Chocolatier store, when the woman behind the counter asked if she could help me, I replied, “Oh, no, thanks; I’m just salivating.” She did not smile. “Well, let me know if you need help,” she said, and disappeared into the back of the store. I repeated the remark at The Cheesecake Factory. The young man did not smile. “OK, that’s cool,” he said, and resumed wiping down the glass-topped counter. I repeated it yet again at Auntie Anne’s Pretzels, and the woman’s lips contorted into an almost smile, though it did not escape into the rest of her face. At the Fudge Shop on Scheels’ second floor I sampled a bit of peanut butter fudge while the young salesman sat reading Stephen King’s Under the Dome. “This is really good,” I told him. He looked up. “Yeah, but I didn’t make it,” he replied, and, slipping back under his dome, went back to reading.

The delightful fragrance of the Bath and Body Works Store drew me inside. “It smells great in here,” I told the saleswoman. “So I’m told,” she said; “I’m used to it; it’s lost on me.” Unolfactoried in a nectared space of musk and sweet and spice. At the center of the mall’s second floor, slouched in a leather chair butted up against a wrought-iron railing, an earbudded teenager lay sleeping. Why wasn’t he in school? Outside the Apple Store, the only Apple Store in the state of Iowa, five navy-blue knit shirted employees were convened. As I passed by, I heard one say, “Well, look, here’s what I tell them,” and I remembered an article I had read about Apple employees lying to customers, telling them that trying to unlock their iPhones will render them as useless as bricks—and I thought of words as bricks, plucked from the hod of thought, and how easily they can be mortared into a deceptive solidity. And I remembered the Oz-pointing yellow brick road and the curtained charlatan at the end of it.

Taking a down escalator, I entered the lower floor of Scheels looking for warm winter boots, the only purchase I had thought about making, only to find a profusion of flip-flops and sandals and thongs and crocs and biking, baseball, soccer, and running shoes—nothing but spring footwear. The young salesman was friendly and apologetic. “Snow is being forecast for the weekend,” I told him. “Yeah,” he said, “but, you know, if management says to strike the winter display and put up the spring shoes, well, you gotta do it.” We talked a bit. He was 19, had his own place, liked to hike, had his eye on the assistant shoe manager position. I asked if he planned to go to college. “Maybe, but right now I want to work and make some money. Maybe in a couple of years, though,” and I knew he never would, knew the poetics of his life were end-stopped, even if they did rhyme.

It was time to head back to Max and Mini’s to pick up Kathy. I arrived where I started, at Younkers. The old man asleep in the wheelchair was gone. I imagined him eating a bowl of ice cream, a reward for his lonely waiting. I had purchased nothing, not even the Frappaccino Lite I had briefly contemplated while passing Starbucks. I felt, somehow, subversive. No getting and spending for me this day. Instead, I walked. I looked. I had circumnavigated the mall, had followed the scripted path laid out by the mall’s designers, leading me past the open mouths of store upon store. I passed past a profusion of stores, the same store in many cases, only the name different, nothing distinctive about them except their determined effort to be distinctive. An exultant banality.

It was a dark transit, but I found I could make no portentous pronouncements about hegemonic economic forces spin doctoring into misrecognized freedom and individuality and choice. I garnered no insights into the privatized logic of consumer-driven culture. We can never really know the thrumming, vibrant churn of meaning that things capture, contain, and allude to. There is always, locked in the heart, an immaterial etcetera, made of feeling and experience, unkeyed by and attached to material things. What I do know is that I saw something smaller than socio-political theorizing, but bigger, possibly, than philosophy; something cataracted by its very everydayness, a structure of feeling, an affect, shadowed and unsayable, a desire, perhaps, for the elsewhere, the something other, the unfastened moment, the more than.