by Tod Davies
Here’s the thing about shopping. I hesitate to say what I think about it, seeing as how the last thing I wrote was an “I hate” article, as in “I hated being an object of desire.” To say, “I hate shopping,” seems to be leading me down a kind of thorny garden path of not exactly constructive commentary.
But somehow I feel the two things are related. I mean being an object of desire and the desire to go shopping. Not the kind of shopping you need to do to keep body and soul alive and happy. Not food shopping, not basic needs shopping—no, these are more real, and not only do I have no problem with them, this kind of shopping, especially in the case of food shopping, makes me absolutely giddy with enjoyment. I mean the kind of shopping that is to serving real needs what being a general object of desire is to being truly loved. Shopping for unneeded anything. It just isn’t to the point, it’s useless when it comes to satisfying the thing truly desired, and it’s way too glamorized by the culture for reasons of manipulation. Those reasons of the culture, both the ones that work to convince young girls that it’s somehow a benefit to them to be an object (stay there! Stand there and pose! Don’t do anything else, just keep still and stick your chest out!), and the ones that work to convince the population that somehow it’s a virtuous and patriotic chore to get out there and buy useless crap, well, those reasons, I suspect, have at the bottom the same questionable root.
And that root is this: someone else wants to be in charge of me. That someone wants to be the subject and let me be the object. That someone wants to control resources that are rightfully mine. That someone else learned the hard way, over the centuries, that it doesn’t do to force people to be objects. Better to fool them into thinking they want to do it all on their own. People don’t like to be objects unless they’re fooled into it. And they’re fooled into it by someone who benefits from the fooling. That someone else has, as you might expect, gotten increasingly cunning. You want people to work harder to make you money? But they demand more free time, a more human way of life? Just pay them more, but make sure they spend it on an endless cycle of crap, stuff that doesn’t fulfill any real needs but that needs to be constantly replenished. They’ll work even harder to get that stuff. It’ll be like the Victorian workhouses of the nineteenth century, only better paid. Sure, the population won’t have time to spend with their families, with their communities, with themselves, even. But that’s all to the good—it doesn’t give them any time to analyze their situation and wonder, “Am I actually having any fun? Is this actually the life I was hoping to lead? Am I living without exploiting any of my fellow beings?” Don’t give them any time for that. Just keep ‘em on the run, keep ‘em shopping. And the best part is, they’ll think they only have themselves to blame.
I used to have the same kind of sick, bored feeling when I would go shopping ‘for fun’ as I would have when I was, say, sitting at a party listening to some drunk guy tell me how he’d fallen in love with me at first sight. What, I would think, was the point of that? What was the point of all this stuff? What exactly does this have to do with my own life and making it better? It always seemed to be more about the person or institution promising me a benefit, more than it actually benefited me. And that was where the sick feeling came from, I suspect. The unconscious knowledge that I was conniving with my own oppression, whether out of a misplaced sense of kindness or vanity or secret hope that I’d get something without having to work for it. Whether it was having to take time out of my life to shop for stuff I didn’t really want and certainly didn’t need, or to cater to a person who claimed my attention by claiming to cater to me, it was the same thing. There seemed to be no end to it.
But there is an end to it, and this is where I can really leap out and be joyful. It turns out all you have to do is say, politely, “No, thank you,” to all that stuff you find unsatisfying, no matter what corporation or celebrity or tyrannical lover insists you feel differently than you do. All you have to do is make up your mind to get on with a life that you do find enjoyable and satisfying, and one that you try to bring in line with not interfering with another’s right to the same. You just wake up in the morning and say, “What would make this a really good day?” And then you get busy and do it. One day after another, and there’s your life, and it’s a good one, and it’s going somewhere, and you don’t feel like it’s wasting the short time you have left.
And you know what? That kind of life? It’s a lot of fun. And it just about never involves shopping.