Things at a Hardware Store to Use for a Vase
Why Nosotros Purchase Things We Don't Demand
You know that feeling of standing in your closet filled with clothes, but y'all have nothing to wear?
Most people believe that feeling is the abstraction of evil of branding and marketing experts conspiring to make you addicted to wanting more stuff.
Trust me, marketers wish they could dupe you into buying things you don't want. Heck, I'd be a billionaire by now if we'd cracked that.
The elementary truth is you can't brand people purchase something they don't want.
You tin can, withal, make people buy things they don't need.
I arguably don't need more than than ane shirt. Functionally, it covers me and protects me from nature.
But I NEED 12 shirts considering if I show upwardly to client meetings in the same outfit over and over once more, at that place are tangible consequences to my career.
In the best-example scenario it becomes a "thing" and I become to brand a social statement about information technology (ergo, The Jobs Turtleneck). In the worst-case scenario, it becomes a point of mockery that comes with not-so-nice implications near my character (Exhibit A).
Given the track tape of my life, it'south gonna be the latter.
Which means, I'chiliad not being materialistic when I go on a shopping frenzy for shirts. I'm being applied.
Odds are, so are yous. Because the real reason we buy things we don't need is not equally simple as "we're vain materialistic capitalists!" The real reason has to do with how shopping came to be in the commencement place.
Shopping was invented
Yep, invented.
Back in the day, the ultra wealthy were the but ones who had lots of things. And they certainly did non "shop" for them.
Habiliment was made by a custom tailor, art was commissioned or inherited, and dinnerware was a family heirloom. You lot got bragging rights for quality, durability, and longevity.
If you weren't wealthy, and so you were SOL.
Normal people had fewer things because they were difficult to industry and produce (and therefore, expensive).
The idea of something existence dispensable or portable or cheap didn't exist. Plastic wasn't mainstream yet, aluminum was simply existence invented, and merely one company had an assembly line.
There wasn't much to shop for because you couldn't produce anything at scale (yet).
You had one coat. Ane pair of gloves. One pair of shoes. One pair of pants. And you took care of your stuff because you didn't have much of it.
Plus, you didn't need more things because upwards mobility wasn't a reality for virtually people.
If you were a servant, for example, you lot didn't demand prissy dancing shoes or a tie bar. Where would you use them? You lot had your servant outfit and your casual outfit and that was it. Y'all weren't doing anything besides working and sleeping.
The notion of "options" for ordinary people was revolutionary.
There'southward a great scene in the PBS series Mr. Selfridge (about the mogul who brought the department store to London) where Mr. Selfridge walks into a glove store and asks to meet more options.
The lady who helps him is promptly fired as a result of her behavior. To be clear, her "behavior" was helping a customer browse options.
The scene is fictional, just the bespeak still stands: You went into a store to buy something or you didn't get in at all.
It was all very practical and very formal. "You lot demand something to encompass your hands because it'due south cold? Here is something to comprehend your hands. Good-goodbye."
You chose from what they gave you. There was no "shopping around" considering in that location were no other places to get.
Shopping, in its inception, introduced the freedom of expression and freedom of choice into the mainstream.
It was the offset fourth dimension in history where things that were confined to the upper class were of a sudden accessible to anyone.
Consider the outset soap bar you lot didn't accept to make yourself. Or the showtime pair of gloves you didn't have to sew yourself. Or the first pair of shoes y'all didn't have to wear daily. Or the first pencils you lot could get in en masse.
(Side note: in getting distracted while writing this commodity, stumbled upon this crawly history of tape, another thing we didn't have.)
All of these things are staples in our lives today, but they weren't for most of human history.
Technically, we didn't need any of them for survival, but they fabricated life easier and more efficient.
These things fabricated information technology so yous weren't concerned 24/7 with the business concern of survival. You could concern yourself with thriving.
That was emancipation my friends, not materialism.
Increased admission to "things we don't need" (or, more than accurately, "things nosotros lived without for centuries, but now have") had massive cultural consequences.
Consider this: You're a adult female who's worked as a ladies' maid for 25 years.
You watched your masters live in luxury for 25 years. They go to exclusive parties and events decked out in fancy dress, overnice fabrics, and all the latest styles. You dreamed of donning those outfits, but it's ever been just that — a dream.
Then the department store comes along.
That nice dress you've been dreaming about for 25 years is suddenly accessible to you.
Do you want it?
Yes.
Practise you need information technology?
No. Where are you going to become in that kind of dress?
Except in your mind, you're non thinking near the use of the dress. Considering you were never buying "a dress."
You were buying your permission slip into a life yous never dreamed possible for yous.
Nosotros never buy what we recollect we're buying.
Nosotros don't buy things.
Nosotros buy how things make us experience.
Take Uggs.
No i has a want to ain Uggs.
Yous accept a desire to exist comfortable and a want to fit in. That's why you lot buy Uggs.
And when yous wear your Uggs, y'all go the feelings that you purchased. Y'all feel comfortable and you feel like you fit in with your group of friends.
This is further evidenced by the reasons people cite for not buying Uggs: They practise not want to feel similar they fit in with the kinds of people who would buy Uggs.
Because purchases are emotional.
No thing how inconsequential of a purchase decision you deem it — you're still choosing it based on emotion. Even commodities.
"Simply I just pick the cheapest and move on with my life. How is that emotional?"
It's emotional because there are implications about you lot built into the purchase.
If you view yourself as a salt-of-the-earth self-fabricated man immune to the effects of advertising, well, buying cheap is very emotional because information technology affirms your self-concept.
Self concept: "I'thousand smarter than every other shopper, they're fallin' for this brand bull$%^&. Mmm mm not me."
Attempt getting someone like that to buy the expensive bolt at the hardware store.
If they exercise, they'll be pissed almost it ALL day. You lot don't go pissed well-nigh things y'all don't experience something near. Pissed is an emotion.
More than affirming your cocky-concept, y'all're also non ownership what you think you're buying.
You think you're buying a bolt, simply you're really ownership that teaching moment you're most to have in the backyard with your son.
Same affair with a gym membership. You're non ownership a gym membership. You're ownership your dream body.
Aforementioned thing with green juice. Yous're not buying green juice. You're buying permission to exist naughty later without feeling guilty.
Same affair with a table. You're not buying a tabular array. You're buying your fantasy social life where yous host parties with wealthy friends who set their drinks on your expensive table.
You're never buying what y'all think you're ownership.
Thanks to shopping-as-emancipation from restrictive social, economic, and gender norms, we started this whole "materialism" thing on a actually positive note.
Which is why it's really tough to disengage it all now that nosotros have enough of stuff.
"Stuff" equaled upwards mobility, convenience, and portability. Stuff fabricated life easier. Stuff fabricated life meliorate.
We've gear up a arrangement where "stuff" is a prerequisite for success.
(You lot try getting a job without a smart telephone and only one pair of pants. Good luck to you.)
Stuff wasn't ever virtually stuff.
Information technology was and still is about success. About moving upward in the world. About a life bigger and better than the one you have.
That's why nosotros buy things nosotros don't demand.
Because we recollect we need them.
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