Aware Brain

Humans are amazingly intelligent creatures compared to other species. We have evolved into civilized beings, no longer needing to walk on all fours. In theory, we think before we do things, rather than act on animal instinct like lower animals.

While many primitive traits have been cast aside as we advanced as a species, some remain. Why do humans still buy stuff not necessary for sustenance or pleasure, simply due to impulse or marketing? If it was truly considered, it would be easy to see that the pleasure of having the singing bass hanging on your wall would be vastly outweighed by the pain of not having more resources for retirement, investment, or tangible security. Without spending $25 on the singing bass, a person could have $100 extra in 25 years after investment, which might allow them to retire a day earlier. This one day might not seem like it means alot, but add up all of the other trinkets and it could mean weeks, months, or years.

Even if it was only one day, wouldn’t an entire day of freedom, being able to hang out with friends and family be worth more than the few tacky chuckles at the bass? Even actor Alec Baldwin, at age 51, is starting to question the blind following of “normal” societal instincts, and even the drudgery of his acting career. “I needed to make a living. And I realized: I’m done with doing it for the money.” I’m 51 years old and I spent 30 years of my life doing things I didn’t want to do. The things you do to please other people! I said to myself, Well now I’m just going to have a good time. That was the most freeing thing. For the first time, I wanted to do whatever I felt like that day.”

So you have no rubber bass hanging on your wall, you say? What about chrome wheels on your car? Granite countertop? Landscaping? Dinners prepared for you at a restaurant? None of these are necessary to life, and effectively undermine your future, even if they seem important today. Part of the reason they seem important today is because there is no clear picture of the future which you can compare it to.

What makes humans buy things beyond needs? Each advertisement you see, hear, or read is an assault on your mind. It manipulates you to discard rational judgment, and reason. Columnist Fred Reed asks, “Without the Shopping Season and high-pressure advertising, who would buy much of anything? Suppose that Apple Computer couldn’t advertise, but just put its new hiss-crackles on its web site? Why isn’t this reasonable? If you felt a compulsion to own an iPod with thirty-seven buttons and a sonar-depth-finder, you could. But you’d have to want the thing enough to look for it.”

People are starting to ask, “where did our net worth go?” Maybe some are beginning to make adjustments to priorities: “”The story of 2009 continues to be one of consumer retrenchment and credit tightness as people strive to pay down debt or are forced to abandon it, and lenders more aggressively manage risk in their portfolios,” Equifax consumer-information executive Dann Adams said Tuesday.”

It is still too early to tell whether this is out of necessity, or conscious choice. Regardless, the bombardment of advertising and marketing is a tough opponent to defeat. If you truly are contemplating getting off of the consumer treadmill, remember that you need to find a mental mechanism to ignore or counteract advertising. (Otherwise you will be like a recovering alcoholic who lives in a bar.)

Think you are strong enough to handle it? Remember that Tiger Woods, proven to have extraordinary discipline in his golf career, was not able to resist this:

Even though he had this, (and knew he was risking it.)

If you think it will be easy, think again. Good luck.