About a week ago, I decided that I had been living in intellectual no-mans-land for too long and went on a quest to smarten myself up. This quest led me to download many, many iTunes U resources. I started with a course on the Romantics by Timothy Morton from UC Davis. So far the podcasts are very interesting (and only made better by the fact that Morton is English), but one thing in particular has struck me, and I can't get it out of my head. I'll paraphrase it like this:
A consumerist defines who they are by their choice of product.
Dr. Morton pointed out that the romantic era saw the introduction of many "isms" - consumerism being one of them. But people had always been consuming. The difference was that now people were aware of consumption. A consumerist therefore, is not just one who consumes, but one who's aware that he's consuming and one who's aware of what he's consuming.
I like coffee. I like the way it tastes and I like the way it helps me start my day. I also like coffee-culture. I'm from the NW. We like coffee there. I also like fun sunglasses. I also like volvos and literature and tea and cheese and board games and theatre and grammar.
In each of these cases, there are two things at work: actual preference for these things and an awareness that I'm the type of person who likes coffee, theatre, literature, Volvos, and fun sunglasses. But it's all a lie. We are more than the sum of our preferences. In fact, we are even more than the sum of our talents. I am not defined by the choice I made to listen to these podcasts any more than I am defined by my "love" of coffee and Volvos.
I think that these days, (at least in the West) individuals are at a loss to be recognized and identified as just that - individuals. And so we buy things. We consume things in the hope that we'll express who we are. As Tom Hanks' character says in, "You've Got Mail, "So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self..." But it's a shallow type of definition, and the fact that we find more and more ways to consume just serves as evidence to the hollowness of the system.
However, perhaps the very desire to "define" oneself is misguided. I read an article today about how internet search engines "customize" searches for you based on prior search history. Part of the author's concern related to how this customization can perpetuate the limits of one's intellectual bubble. Some of you commented on that article, noting that our own bubble (outside-of/beyond the internet) is often self-induced. We limit ourselves through our choices. And sometimes we consciously limit ourselves. "After all, I'm not a video game type of person." I can't tell you how many times I've thought that - as though playing or not playing a game will affect who I am as a person. Definition is limitation.
Jane Austen would say that most people don't actually want to be someone else. One might envy others. One might envy their specific talents or virtues, but in the end, one would never want to completely trade places with them - not if that meant giving up one's own self-hood. I think this is generally true. I can't put my finger on it, but there is a part of me that I feel is inscrutably different from anyone else - a self. And that cannot be defined.
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