How often has it happened that you have gone to a shopping mart, found a popular item on sale, and bought more than what was actually necessary?
The 21st century is a living, breathing organism - it is constantly evolving and quickly adapts to the situations around it. This century has seen unimaginable improvements in technology, from large strides of advancement in space technology to subtle changes in our everyday machines. While many consider this state of constant change to be a good thing, we fail to look at the other side of the coin.
The progressive transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society, termed as modernisation, is greatly influenced by the advancement of technology. This was originally studied by German sociologist Max Weber, who stated that traditional societies will develop and evolve as they adopt more modern practices. Developments such as new data technology and the need to update traditional methods in transport, communication and production make modernization necessary or at least preferable to the status quo.
On the other hand, consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. The theory states that spending money and consuming goods in increasing amounts is good for the economy and that a person's wellbeing and happiness depends fundamentally on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions. While the given concepts seem to have no connection at all, there subtle influences that link them together.
Our ever-changing world has a constant increase in overall population. This increase in our numbers forces the producers of goods and services to produce in greater quantities, and eventually look for an advanced or superior technology to do the job. This is one of the reasons for the consistent improvement and breakthroughs in technology - the modernisation element. As the overall production and supply increase, it also leads to the creation of new goods and services, which contribute to a higher standard of living but cannot be justified as essential for our survival - such as our impulse purchases at the supermarket. Thus, with modernisation of production, we find the commodities and services that we want in increasing abundance, resulting in a rise in our purchasing and a surge in demand - the consumerism element. Thus, the two concepts are linked together in a way that we may not have even realised.
In fact, the idea of consumerism developed mainly during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century with the emergence of large-scale production techniques that completely changed the society and the world economy. The Industrial Revolution saw a huge expansion in the range of technology being used as well as a great increase in the use of natural resources for production. With this came in the concepts of mass production and over production, which result in overconsumption. In the mid-20th century, nearly four-fifths of the expenditure of people went towards accommodation and less than 12% was towards other commodities like food and entertainment. The expenditure distribution has changed drastically since then, with expenditure on housing plummeting from 72.1% to 22.0% while almost trebling in the case of other consumption.
Hence, we can clearly see that consumeristic behaviour and change of modernisation have deep connections and influence each other to a large extent. Through all of these dense connections, the thing that gets affected the most is our planet’s resources. Our annual natural resource consumption has skyrocketed from 161 million metric tons in 1900 to a whopping 100 billion metric tons in 2019. That means our resource consumption has increased by more than 62111%!! It’s no wonder that we are facing such an acute global crisis.
This extreme overexploitation of resources has caused the disappearance of habitats essential for flora and fauna and, therefore, the extinction of species. Of the 30 million different animal and plant species in the world, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says that 26,197 species face the threat of extinction. By removing minerals from the Earth at a higher rate than that of the world to create them destroys the quality of resources as well the Earth’s very ability to produce them. The peak oil theory supports this fact by putting forward that it will come a time when the globe will experience uncertainties on alternative means of fuels owing to the over-harvesting of petroleum.
At this point in time, we are slowly beginning to recognise the intensity of the threat we face and make new laws and policies that will reduce wasteful production and consumption. Until we can do this, reduction in ecosystem destruction, environmental pollution and global warming seems to be only distant dream. So, the next time you see a sale in your local retail shop, ask yourself, “Is this really that necessary?”. While the path is long and hard, we will surely be able to overcome this problem.
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