A few days ago I was chatting with a corporate law professor, he talks about the somewhat unique phenomenon in America: it is quite commonplace that the salary of a not-super-affluent three-person household, such as a father holding an office job and a stay-at-home mom, to afford pretty nice houses equipped with standardized and well-maintained amenities, as opposed to renting condos or apartments in the crammed city center. He attributes this uniqueness to prosperity of American society. “Prosperity,” he said, “makes everything possible.”
If we trace the source of such prosperity, most possibly we would end up with capitalism. Or more precisely, the rapid economic growth as an outcome of free trade, an increasingly integrated global market and flowing of capital through cross-border investments makes it possible. A scholar has compared capitalism with Christianity and Islam and termed it “the triumphant religion of the twentieth century” (See here for more). This so-called prosperity would seem more true if we choose to disregard the “1% and 99%,” division, or to believe that the “trickle down” effect is still valid and effective in our time. Though this celebration of capitalism is almost brushed off by the rise of global populist movements largely due to the economic inequality where wealth is concentrated only on the upper crust of society (which is worth discussing in a more in-depth manner in another article), the impact of prosperity on society and individuals is so prevalent and intense that we simply cannot take it for granted.
Prosperity takes the form of consumerism in an individual level. Our life is transformed entirely by the material comfort brought about by the abundance of goods and commodities. As soon as we get accustomed to instantly getting what we want without having to sweat for it, there is no turning back. We become so spoiled that a life without such ease becomes hardly desirable; service undelivered becomes a sign of incompetence, and an expectation unfilled is an invitation for complaint and rage.
Typical behaviors related to consumerism include hoarding certain branded commodities or luxury goods, such as collecting Nike/ Adidas sneakers, or taking pride in buying the latest hi-tech products such as Apple watches or iPhones. Criticisms of these behaviors are usually contested by an equally compelling argument of personal choice. Even if we lament over the fact that things individuals own ends up owning and defining them, those not (yet?) bought into the clout of ownership cannot and should not control the voluntary or involuntary choices of every one else. In a liberal society, relativism, tolerance, respect and space are in place to protect all that you disagree with and find repulsive to.
Most manifestly, the amount of revenues generated by transactions in relation to e-commerce in China has increased exponentially in the past few years. Transaction cost has been lowered unprecedentedly. Simply by tapping your fingers on the smartphone, food and groceries would be delivered in front of your porch within an hour. No need for carrying cash with you all the time—WeChat Payment (original functions of WeChat are similar to that of WhatsApp with a variety of add-up functions such as e-payment, phone top-up, bike renting or even investment management) or AliPay is available even when you buy street foods. Renting bikes through smartphone apps becomes commonplace and you can park the bikes anywhere because others can simply locate those bikes through the Global Position System (GPS) in the apps. The dark side of such low transaction cost is that many transactions that might be considered non-essential in the past are incurred. When you don’t really see your flatten wallet you don’t notice how much you have consumed. Apparently as long as you have money, no one is stopping you from spending it on things you want.
Yet what comes with the increasingly unnecessary transactions and what is often overlooked by the freedom of choice argument is the social cost derived from such collective action. When you pay additional few RMBs to bring the restaurant food to your table, you hardly think of how much extra carbon dioxide the delivering vehicles have emitted, how many plastic bags and wrapping paper are used for packaging, and how many pairs of chopsticks are consumed. When everyone rent the bikes at such cheap price, few has foreseen the consequence of, for example, the parked bikes occupying too much space along the beach, leaving little space for people in fact taking a walk (See the news article here). Those effects are termed “tragedy of the commons” in economics, where individuals acting based on their self-interest in a shared-resource system end up destroying the entire system through their collective actions (See here for more). The ease of making transactions accelerates the occurrence of such tragedies and exacerbates the status quo by pushing for more “irresponsible” behaviors that take no account of the negative externalities that would be inflicted on the societal level.
The curse of consumerism—stunning amount of waste, depletion of natural resources, acceleration of climate change—have been made buzzwords on social media for a fairly long time, and it can never be stressed enough. Apart from this most manifest destructive effect of consumerism on our mother Earth, there are other equally undesirable yet more latent, chronic and intangible effects. Consumption as a group behavior exerts an overwhelming influence—to the extent of coercion—on individuals who are less willing to be bought into it, and creates a culture where consumption becomes closely connected with individuals’ positions in an organization and their social status. According to Fukuyama in his book “The End of History and the Last Man,” human beings have an innate drive for recognition as part of their nature. And in his other book “The Origin of Political Order,” he claims the desire for status or recognition is the main force for historical advancement and pushes us to evolve into norm-followers. The desire of not being “excommunicated” and even recognized as a success by the social groups they belong has greatly disincentivized the alternative way of living, namely, minimalist lifestyle with very modest level of consumption.
This alternative culture emerges among young adults, where possession is rejected and minimalism is celebrated. For example, writer Fumio Sasaki in his book “Goodbye, Things” described his experience of practicing minimalism and how this helps him find the long-lost happiness (See his Guardian article here),“Minimalism is a lifestyle in which you reduce your possessions to the least possible. Living with only the bare essentials has not only provided superficial benefits such as the pleasure of a tidy room or the simple ease of cleaning, it has also led to a more fundamental shift. It’s given me a chance to think about what it really means to be happy.”
Yet his passion is not widely shared in the society. Admittedly, stinting on food and housing are viewed not as a choice but a makeshift for millennials who are constantly accommodating for opportunities popped up in their lives and who are always on the move. Or even worse, middle-aged practitioners of minimalist lifestyle are perceived as “losers” that are unable to provide financial security for themselves and their families, if any. The alternative lifestyle would find it difficult to beat the norm, which is followed by the majority number of patrons and which defines almost everything else that surrounds it.
Even if the force of consumption and materialism is hard to resist, it nevertheless pushes them to think further beyond material satisfaction—such as meaning of life, pursuit of happiness, or ways to make a difference. The material satisfaction not only relieves them of the burden imposed on their parent generations, but also ironically gives rise to a sense of emptiness—the twin brother of materialism. Pastime is hardly enough to fill such void. Political engagement, instead, would instill in their minds and souls a higher purpose and a sense of mission. The reality, however, shows an oddly opposite picture: the millennials in China demonstrates a lukewarm attitude toward politics compared to those in other countries, especially the liberal democracies; and such disengagement is sanctioned and encouraged by the Chinese society at large. Some western commentators attribute this unique phenomenon to the “new social contract” formed since the renowned but extremely sensitive incident at the end of 1990s, where political discussions were traded away for social stability and economic well being (See the review article of Even Osnos’ book “Age of Ambition”). I believe there are two possible explanations. First, milennials’ parent generation has learned their lessons in a hard way; the shocking consequences had diffused fear among the dreamers who were fortunate enough to survive, and transformed the remnant of their idealism into a craving for stability and safety; mediocrity seems not that bad a choice after all. In turn they began to preach to their kids how the hiccups and turbulence in a society would mean tragedies for individual households, and insinuated that one should keep away from any event that may trigger such misfortune. This fear has at least two layers of meaning: the fear of being persecuted for the activism in contrary to the dominant ideology, and the fear of losing what they have gained after being co-opted into the system. Second, the individual economic well being under a national prosperity has a self-perpetuating effect: it prolongs instead of challenging the status quo, whereas political engagement works to the exact opposite. How active a person engages in politics depends on the life stage one is going through—young adults are usually the ones avid for changes and for fixing injustice, as they are not yet members of the “haves” in the society. As they proceed to other stages in life and are no longer the “have-nots,” they would voluntarily withdraw from being the challenger of the establishment.
Economic prosperity has changed us on so many levels—some are conspicuous and drastic, such as our way of consumption, while others are encroaching and intangible, like the way we think and engage with the rest of the society. Millennials are particularly susceptible to such impact and the increasing choices concomitant with economic well-being add further complication to their already confused minds. “Where to” is a good question to ask. But an even more important question is—“what’s for?”