Don’t fall for the ‘consumer’ con
Implicit in the words we use are the ideas that we hold about the world. And implicit in the word consume is the idea that we have changed species and changed nature. No longer are we homo sapiens. We are homo economicus. We are mere consumers.
‘‘I’ve been giving a lot of thought,’’ said the man on the radio, ‘‘to how we consume music.’’
I swear that when the local fire brigade arrives one day to cut my corpse from the crushed remains of my car they will find my lifeless fingers still gripping the little knob on the radio in the act of turning it off, gripping it indeed with such monomaniac intent that the whole of my being has gone into the act so that none was left for steering. And if it so happens, by gross misfortune, that I crash into oncoming traffic rather than the telegraph pole of destiny, and that the said oncoming traffic contains you or one of whom you are fond, I apologise in advance because the fault will have been entirely mine. But may I also suggest you consult your legal representative with a view to the possibility of suing Radio New Zealand for provocation. (And while you’re at it you can try doing them for rebranding themselves as RNZ, as if, in these days of multimedia and crossplatform penetration, the word radio were now an admission of archaic sin.)
Consume music indeed. Yes, yes, of course I know what the man meant. He meant the various means of reproducing and transmitting music: records, CDs, streaming (whatever that might be; I’m so far behind with technology now that I expect any moment to find that I am actually ahead again, like a runner being lapped) but my quibble is with the verb consume. It’s a vile verb. It’s a tellingly vile verb. It’s – and if you put your ear to the paper you will hear me scrabbling for an image that conveys in full the distaste I feel – it’s a Trump of a verb.
Implicit in the words we use are the ideas that we hold about the world. And implicit in the word consume is the idea that we have changed species and changed nature. No longer are we homo sapiens. We are homo economicus. We are mere consumers.
Not people, not men and women striving to do the decent thing, not moral beasts, not thinkers, not makers, not doers, not listeners to music or readers of books, not, above all, lovers, but conbloody-sumers. We are defined by what we acquire, what we buy and ingest. To the point where the old bumper sticker jokes – born to shop, or, he who dies with the most toys wins – are jokes no longer, have been shorn of their irony, are now just the way things are, are now, god help us, straight-faced philosophy.
We are so many Pacmen, so many ceaselessly chomping jaws, doomed to seventy years of consuming, digesting, secreting, until, bloated, lard-laden, too close to spherical to rise from the consumptive table, we expire at last, triumphantly gross, the consumer dream made flesh.
Already we have an organisation dedicated to this brave new life. Consumer NZ warns us of cheap imported coffee machines, rates the family car for fuel economy and puts front-loading washing machines to the toughest of laundry-related tests on our behalf and then publishes its findings in a magazine, thrillingly entitled Consumer. And since the magazine exists there must presumably also exist people who buy it, people who sit down with it every month to plan their next acquisition, their next step down the path to, well what? Fulfilment, joy, gratification? Ha.
Prosperity is a fine thing. I am all for washing machines. But they aren’t me and they don’t matter. If you look back on the life you’ve led and the life you hope to lead, if you scribble a list of the stuff that’s mattered and that’s likely to matter, the stuff that stings or thrills, that’s made you skip with joy or curl with misery, tell me where washing machine features on that list, or anything else from your shopping.
In 1976 Erich Fromm wrote a book called To Have or To Be. The book was altogether too bearded and seventies to be taken seriously, but its premise was that we were identifying more with what we had and less with what we were and that the corruption began with the language. And now, four decades on, Fromm is looking like a prophet. For if we have reached a point where a man can say on the radio not that we listen to music but that we consume it, and not only not be thrown off the airwaves instantly and in perpetuity, but also not even be asked what the hell he’s on about, then, frankly, we’re far from far from Fromm.