Consumerism and the Ability to Sit Still In a Room

How the world might be profoundly changed if we can enjoy our living room.

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Imagine you can sit in a room and feel perfectly happy. Not expensive, right?

Now imagine you can be perfectly happy playing tennis. Not expensive either, is it? True, but unless you own your own court (which would cost a lot), you’re going to have to drive to a court, and that costs something, so there is still some spending going on. But not a lot of spending! Great!

Imagine you like to eat out. Imagine you hate cooking, which is to say you have not met the condition of being someone who likes cooking, either due to genetics, family culture — there could be lots of reasons. Eating out can be expensive. Drinks. Food. Tips. It all adds up. Imagine you did this five times a week. You would be contributing to the economy, sure, but it would also cost a lot.

Imagine you get bored. Imagine that you stop feeling bored by going out and doing stuff. Stuff costs.

See what I’m getting at?

The less we’re able to sit in a room and feel content, the more money we will likely spend. Money is hard to acquire. It requires a job. It requires skills. It requires suffering stress. Yes, even the hermit might have to pay for healthcare and food, so I’m not saying this is simple, but I am saying that the more we can be the kind of people who can sit in a room and feel content, the less money we will need, which suggests that the more free we will be, for we will not have to work as much.

Ah, there’s the rub: boredom causes a loss of freedom. If I get bored, I will likely need money to avoid that boredom, and so I will have to work. Capitalism loves boredom.

“Culture” generally entails a love of thinking, conversation, reading, and contemplative walks. “Culture” can be pricey, sure — opera tickets aren’t cheap — but it doesn’t have to be pricey. I use the word “culture” here because that’s often what people would talk about in the past regarding the value of an education in “arts and letters”: the education was good because it helped us be “cultured.” This can be elitist and bad, sure, but there’s another side of it where “culture” can help us avoid “capture” (to allude to Deleuze). If we get bored, it’s easier for Capitalism to “capture” us, which is to say if we’re able to genuinely love a great conversation, Capitalism will have a harder time taking away our freedom. Furthermore, we might be better equipped to use Capitalism in creative and useful ways (which is to say “be artifexian,” a topic covered in “The Creative Concord” by O.G. Rose).

Pascal supposedly quipped that all the word’s problems were a result of humanity’s inability to sit still and quietly in a room, and if that’s true then we could say that Capitalism may hate for people to be able to solve the world’s problems. Capitalism doesn’t want us to be able to enjoy a conversation at home; Capitalism wants us to enjoy a conversation at a restaurant. Capitalism perhaps doesn’t hate “culture,” but it certainly doesn’t incentive us in a context that doesn’t contribute to consumerism. And that might be a problem if ultimately it is creativity which keeps Capitalism from destroying itself (as argued throughout O.G. Rose). Does Capitalism tend to create consumers who then ultimately contribute to the destruction of Capitalism? Well, irony is a topic of many great cultural works…

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