Dismantling Consumer Society

Lecture VII:  Dismantling Consumer Society

Introduction

1. In the last lecture we undertook an investigation of factors responsible for economic growth.  This investigation was motivated by the realization that continued growth is the source of our environmental crisis, and the hope that if the conditions responsible for growth could be eliminated then the crisis could be alleviated.  The main conclusion of this investigation was that contemporary society is impelled toward ceaseless economic growth by certain values that hold sway within it.
2. Preliminary considerations indicated that the offending values are of two sorts.  One is the value our society attaches to wealth.  Valuing wealth as we do, we give free rein to individual desire for wealth which stands behind most economic activity.  The second sort comprises values by which consumption is motivated.  Inasmuch as wealth stems from profit generated by consumption, the two cooperate in their influence on economic growth.
3. One purpose of the present lecture is to look more carefully at how values of these two sorts interact.  The primary purpose of the lecture, however, is to gain some sense of how these values could be rendered inoperative.  This will require an examination of how they normally operate.  By way of preparation, let us take a moment to become clear on exactly what kind of values we are talking about.

Social values

1. The term ‘value’ obviously has many senses.  There is the momentary value of a product, the personal value attached to a family heirloom, and the value of a variable in logic or mathematics.  None of these senses is of present concern.  There is also the sense in which we say a person or institution (like a church) upholds certain moral values, meaning that the party in question maintains certain views about what is morally right and wrong.  We are not primarily concerned with values of this sort either.
2. Values in the relevant sense are characteristic of societies in general, rather than of particular persons or organizations.  Briefly defined, a social value is something generally viewed in a favorable light within the society it characterizes.  A society might look favorably, for example, on loyalty, beer drinking, and contact sports; or again, on hard work, thrift, and minding one’s own business.  Then contact sports and beer drinking would be operative social values, or thrift and hard work as the case might be.
3. Let us take the value of honesty as a straightforward example.  For honesty to be operative as a social value is for it to influence social behavior in particular ways.  For instance, people will tend to look favorably on honesty whenever they encounter it.  They will appreciate honesty in the behavior of other people, whether in action, intention, or forthright speech.  Moreover, they will generally display honesty in their own behavior.  A consequence of this general esteem for honesty, accordingly, is that people will tend to deal honestly with each other as a matter of course, unless under pressure to do otherwise on particular occasions.
4. Another consequence is that people will be accustomed to honest dealing.  Just as they tend to treat others in a forthright manner, so they will tend to expect honesty as their due return.  While there will be exceptions, of course, social interactions within the group will generally be characterized by integrity and mutual trust.
5. A further mark of an operative social value concerns its role in the explanation of social behavior.  As just noted, when honesty is operative in a given social context then honest behavior is expected as a matter of course.  This means that honesty for the most part does not call for explanation.  Indeed, honestly can help explain behavior that is otherwise puzzling, as when one goes out of one’s way to return a lost object to its rightful owner with the explanation “it was the honest thing to do.”  Dishonesty, on the other hand, since it is considered deviant, often calls for explanation itself and seldom figures in explanations of other behavior.
6. Talking still about honesty, we should carefully note that the honesty in question is not a character trait of individual persons.  Moreover, honesty as a social value cannot be defined in terms of honesty as a common trait among society’s individual members.  Any society will have a mix of honest and dishonest people.  And societies in which honesty is an operant value probably tend toward a majority of honest members.  But it remains conceivable that a society with mostly dishonest members might nonetheless uphold honesty as an operant social value.  This should be no more surprising than a society with predominantly overweight members nonetheless valuing trimness in personal appearance.
7. Being honest in character, however, is not the same as viewing honesty in a favorable light.  Just as an obese person could value trimness, so a person could value honesty while lacking it in personal character.  With this in mind, we can think of social values as summations of values held by individual persons.  While settling on particular figures would be arbitrary, for honesty to be operative as a value in a given society is for honesty to be valued by a preponderance of that society’s members.
8. Let us generalize.  For a value to be operative in a given society requires that it be generally esteemed within that context.  General esteem is shown both by a tendency of members to conduct their public affairs in accord with that value and by a tendency to rely on other members to do the same.  For a value to be operative also entails that behavior in accord with that value typically does not call for explanation as such.  Obvious failure to act in accord with this value, on the other hand, usually calls for explanation itself.  This gives us at least a working definition of what it means for a value to be operative in a give social context.

Approbatory and commendatory values

1. This definition applies to social values generally.  Our purposes require breaking social values down into 3 subroups, to which more specific definitions apply in turn.  Our next move, then, is to distinguish approbatory, commendatory, and normative values, each playing a distinct role in the shaping of social behavior.
2. Approbatory and commendatory values both pertain to motives for action.  We begin with the former.  Some impulses to action are considered to be “wired in” or innate.  Examples are the sexual urge, the natural need for food and drink, and the natural desire for pleasure and gratification.  These motives are considered natural in the sense that they are not produced by socialization.  For the most part, they hold constant across all societies.
3. Take the desire for pleasure as an example.  While the desire itself is part of human nature, its influence on behavior varies from society to society.  Certain societies, often for religious reasons, tend to suppress it.  These socities are sometimes labeled “puritanical.”  Other societies endorse it with general approbation, for which reason they might be described as “hedonistic.”  In societies where hedonism prevails, pleasure is operative as a social value.
4. For the value of pleasure to be operative in a given society is for that society generally to approve of pleasure as a motive for action.  Its status as an operative social value conveys a blanket endorsement of pleasure as a goal worthy of being pursued.  When this value is operative, engaging in an activity for the pleasure it provides is generally viewed in a favorable light.  People then feel free as a matter of course to eat rich desserts and seek out bodily pleasure whenever an occasion arises. 
5. When pleasure is operative as a social value, pleasure-seeking is approved in the sense of being condoned.  But the approval involved does not extend to a positive recommendation.  To recommend is the role of a commendatory value, conveying approval in a sense beyond mere acceptance.  This added dimension of approval come into play when society treats a given possession or form of behavior as worthy in its own right.
6. Consider the social value of temperance by way of illustration.  In societies where temperance is operative, temperate behavior is not merely condoned but is held to be worthy of admiration.  In such a society, for example, people will be encouraged to avoid excess in their behavior, including food choice and recreational activities.  People will practice moderation as individuals, and as a group will commend temperance to one another.  Temperance and moderation, in this respect, are commendatory values.
7. One difference between approbatory and commendatory values, to repeat, is that whereas the former countenance certain forms of behavior as socially acceptable the latter carry the force of a positive recommendation.  Another difference has to do with the kind of motivation operating in the two cases.  With approbatory values like pleasure, the motivation comes from a natural desire or instinct, and the value itself renders acting on that motivation socially acceptable.  In this case, the motivation is culturally invariant and universally present in human society.  In the case of commendatory values like temperance, on the other hand, motivation stems from the positive endorsement of the particular society involved.  Insofar as encouragement of this sort varies from society to society, the motivation in question is socially conditioned.  This difference between types of motivation will come into play when we turn to consider how social values might be altered or replaced.

Normative Values

1. Approbatory values condone  preexisting motivations, while commendatory values themselves provide motivation in the form of general social encouragement.  The encouragement extended by commendatory values, however, does not amount to a mandate.  In societies commending moderation, for example, acting immoderately might raise eyebrows but does not amount to an outright transgression.  Commendatory social values neither dictate nor forbid.  Requirements and prohibitions are modes of influence exercised by normative values instead. 
2. Return to the value of honesty for an example.  When society values honesty as a normative standard, by the same token it values the absence of dishonesty.  If honesty is right, so is avoiding dishonesty.  Conversely, if dishonesty is wrong, so is departing from honesty.  In its normative role, the value of honesty establishes a distinction between right and wrong.  What is right is obligatory, what is wrong forbidden.
3. When a social value has normative status, moreover, failure to abide by the norm typically will be met with sanctions.  These sanctions might range from public censure to legal punishment.  In the case of honesty, once again, a politician might be publicly criticized for deceptive campaign promises, and a corporate executive might be put in jail for lying under oath.  A further departure of normative values from the other two sorts, accordingly, is that normative values impose obligations.  Unlike the obligations of normative ethical theory, which generally lack force, normative social values impose obligations that are socially enforced.
4. Other values that might have normative force in a given society include equity, justice, and impartiality.  It is even conceivable that values having commendatory status in one social context might have normative force in another, and vice versa.  Whereas one society might commend moderation but permit its opposite, for example, another might enforce sanctions against immoderation as socially unacceptable.  And in the contrary case, one society might treat honesty as obligatory, while another recommends it but does not penalize dishonesty.

Rendering the value of pleasure inoperative

1. The main purpose of this discussion, once again, is to gain some understanding of how the values of consumer society operate and of what it would take to render them inoperative.  Let us proceed with that task.  We begin with the consumer value of pleasure or gratification, already identified as an approbatory value.
2. Consumer society is premised on social approval of gratification as a motive for action.  Its role in consumer behavior is well understood by marketing specialists.   If a product can be associated in the public eye with gratifying experiences, it is practically assured of success in the consumer market.
3. Consumer gratification is the basis of the junk food industry.  A case in point is the mammoth business of bottling and vending artificially sweetened water known as “soda pop.”  Soda pop has come under extensive criticism by public-health advocates for its contributions to obesity and other health problems.  Our present concern is not with health but with soda pop’s contribution to ecological degradation.
4. At the turn of the century, U.S. consumption of soda pop was roughly one gallon per person per week, compared with 3 gallons of water.  Soft drinks consumed in 2001 came packaged in some 70 billion cans, 25 billion plastic bottles, and 800 million glass bottles, of which total over 50 billion ended up in landfills.  Manufacture of new aluminum containers that year required energy equivalent to over 16 million barrels of crude oil and generated over 3 million tons of greenhouse gases.
5. Another ecological hazard posed by our taste for sweetened water are the many millions of vending machines worldwide that keep soda pop chilled to just the right temperature.  An estimated 3-4 million pop machines in the U.S. today consume roughly 15 billion kWhs of electricity, about ½ percent of the country’s total annual consumption.  A significant share of ecological damage caused by electricity generation thus can be blamed on the soda-pop industry and the social value of gratification that supports it. 
6. A comparable account could be given of the highly flavored hamburgers featured in fast-food restaurants.  One problem with these delicacies is that cows are a highly inefficient means of producing protein for human consumption.  Approximately 15 people could be fed with the grain needed to provide a meat diet for a single person.  Moreover, a large proportion of fast-food beef comes from land made available by the destruction of tropical rainforests.  One recent study concluded that for every quarter-pounder sold in fast-food outlets, roughly 165 lbs. of living matter is destroyed at the place of origin.  Such devastation would not occur without help from gratification as an operative consumer value.
7. A sure sign that this value is operative in current society is that parents are not discouraged from raising their children on a diet of soda pop, yummy hamburgers, and greasy French Fries.  Teenagers feel free to indulge in sweet drinks and fried fat because their peers can be counted on to do the same.  And adults do not hesitate to “treat” themselves with rich food because they have been brought up to think of this as normal behavior.  Health issues aside, our present concern is with what can be done to curtail the environmental damage caused by such practices. 
8. Although various legal expedients have been tried, the most effective way would probably be to render the social value of gratification inoperative.  In effect, this value amounts to social approval of doing things expressly for pleasure.  One counter-measure would be to eliminate, or at least to diminish, this approval.  If this were to happen, people would not automatically assume that pleasure-seeking on their behalf would go unnoticed by their peers.  Doing things for pleasure, such as drinking soda pop in public, would then be like scratching an itch in front of other people; once in a while it might pass without notice, but doing it with abandon would make people stare. 
9. To disengage the value of pleasure effectively would also require a countervailing value that leads people to view pleasure-seeking with disapprobation.  A value of this sort mentioned previously is that of moderation, which constitutes commendation of moderate behavior including the avoidance of self-indulgence.  If moderation were operative as a social value, people would be encouraged to avoid excess pleasure-seeking in their eating and drinking.  In effect, they would be discouraged from supporting the fast-food industry.  While this in itself would not put fast-food chains out of business, their products would become less easy to sell on the basis of the gratification derived from savoring them. 

Comfort and possible replacement values

1. Next we turn to the consumer value of comfort.  In this context, the relevant sense of comfort is not merely absence of discomfort but rather the lavish satisfaction that comes from luxuries like heated swimming pools, massage machines, and air-conditioning.  The relevant sense, in short, is that of so-called “creature comforts” bordering on luxury.  Comfort in this sense is a commendatory value, meaning that people are motivated to seek it by encouragement from others and not because it satisfies a basic need. 
2. Amenities providing comfort of this sort end up as environmental liabilities.  Air-conditioning is a typical example.  Around the turn of the century, the U.S. consumed more electricity running air-conditioners than the total consumption of all but 19 other countries.  The environmentally harmful side-effects of generating electricity of course are well known.  In a recent report by the U.S. Department of Energy, air-conditioning is explicated cited as a major contributor to high levels of CO2 emission.  A consequence is that air-conditioning is a major cause of global warming.
3. Equally well known are the detrimental effects of air-conditioning coolants on the ozone layer.  Despite restrictions of the Montreal Protocol, CFCs are still (as of 2007) used in units produced and sold in India and China.  That makes air-conditioning a major and on-going contributor to skin cancer in humans and to the destruction of chlorophyll-bearing organism essential to both terrestrial and aquatic foodchains.
4. Such hazards notwithstanding, air-conditioning has become a “necessity” in U.S. society.  In warmer parts of the country, where people managed for millennia without artificial cooling, 9 out of 10 homes now feature air-conditioning.  This is due in large part to the elevation of creature comforts from luxuries to common amenities, which is due in turn to the emergence of comfort as a prevalent social value. 
5. How might the value of comfort be rendered inoperative?  As with pleasure, this outcome would involved at least two steps.  One step would amount to a retraction of society’s general recommendation of comfort-oriented behavior.  Another would be to establish a countervailing value by which indulgence in comfort is expressly discouraged.  A value with this effect is that of simplicity, in a sense tantamount to the avoidance of luxurious excess.  If comfort were replaced by simplicity as an operative social value, society would stop reinforcing luxurious behavior and would begin recommending simplicity in personal pursuits instead. 
6. In contemplating this possibility, we should bear in mind that foregoing comforts like hot tubs and air-conditioning does not entail a monastic existence.  Abandoning one extreme does not require embracing the other.  Instead of living in closed boxes that require artificial cooling, we could opt for homes naturally cooled by shade trees (in temperate climates) and cross ventilation.  Air-conditioning would still be used when strict climate control is necessary, as in hospitals and museums.  As far as the general population is concerned, however, most of us would no longer consider it necessary to maintain our living spaces at 68OF.  Most of us would adapt to prevailing temperatures a matter of course, as did our ancestors before air-conditioning was invented.  This would be a distinct boon for our beleaguered environment.

Other consumer values

1. Two other consumer values we might briefly consider are those of convenience and acquisition.  Convenience emerged as a dominant social value with the development of small electric motors in the late 19th C.  Since then, the consumer market has been flooded with motor-driven devices of thousands of different kinds, ranging from dishwashers and vacuum cleaners to pencil sharpeners and can-openers.  A typical American household is likely to feature several dozen such devices, consuming roughly as much electricity as a 20K BTU central air-conditioner.  Among contrivances purchased for the convenience they provide, however, the most ecologically damaging by far is the private automobile.
2. Books have been written about the deleterious effect of cars on the environment, and it is not necessary for our purposes to recount an oft-told story.  We should realize, however, that any adequate account of these effects must deal not only with tailpipe emissions but also with the massive infrastructure required to keep the world’s fleet of well over one-half billion cars running.  Manufacture of a single automobile, for example, uses about 100K megajoules of energy and generates about 30 tons of wastes.  As far as asphalt and concrete are concerned, the U.S. alone has built about 4 million miles of public roads for its one-quarter billion registered passenger cars to move on, not to mention countless parking lots and private driveways.  Needless to say, cars are not sold for convenience alone.  But the biosphere would benefit appreciably if convenience no longer led people to rely on private transportation.
3. As with pleasure and comfort previously, nullifying the effects of convenience would require two parallel changes in social attitudes.  One is to render the value of convenience itself inoperative, which is a matter of society no longer encouraging needless use of convenient devices.  The other is to establish a countervailing value by which the attractiveness of convenience would be at least partially neutralized.
4. One possible candidate is the value of patience.  When patience is operative, avoiding inconvenience will seem less attractive and people will be motivated to do things by themselves without mechanical assistance.  Driving may still be easier than walking, but people generally will be patient enough to put up with the inconvenience.
5. Another basic consumer value is that of acquisition.  As argued in section 16.5 of the text, the value our society attaches to acquisition derives from what economist Thorstein Veblen labeled “conspicuous consumption.”  Once a prerogative of noblemen and rich landowners, this practice amounts to an ostentatious expenditure on goods and services for the express purpose of displaying wealth and power. 
6. While conspicuous consumption is still practiced by the wealthy today, a diluted version has been passed on to people of ordinary means.  People now spend money needlessly as a way of gaining respect from other people, and accordingly of maintaining self-respect.  In the economic setting of consumerism, personal success has less to do with how one manages one’s possessions than with one’s ability to acquire them in the first place. 
7. One countervailing value by which acquisition might be neutralized is that of contentment.  The sense intended is being satisfied with one’s current situation, if basically tolerable, and of not feeling a need for anything more.  As far as possessions are concerned, contentment entails being uninterested in further acquisitions beyond those necessary for a decent existence.
8. People under the influence of acquisition as a dominant social value will tend to be dissatisfied with what they have and will be motivated to continue making unnecessary purchases.  When contentment dominates, by contrast, people will show little interest in new acquisitions.  Just as the former value is a mainstay of consumer society, so the latter tends to stifle excessive consumption.  The latter value obviously is preferable from an environmental perspective.

Wealth

1. This brings us finally to the value of wealth.  Desire for wealth was identified in the previous lecture as the driving force behind the continuing growth of contemporary economies.  In brief review, desire for wealth contributes to economic activity primarily through its influence in motivating corporate managers and investors.  Increased wealth stems from increased corporate profits.  As part of their efforts to increase personal wealth, these interested parties rely on marketing experts to stimulate consumer demand and hence to increase the kind of market activity from which additional profits can be derived.  Given its key role in boosting economic growth, we should look more carefully at the status of wealth as a social value.
2. Let us return to our three-part distinction among approbatory, commendatory, and normative values.  Wealth obviously is not a normative value, since society does not consider refusing to pursue it wrong.  But what about the other two classifications?
3. A case can be made along the following lines for classifying wealth as an approbatory value.  First, consider that in most societies wealth is a form of power.  Then observe that most social animals arrange themselves in hierarchies of relative power, which in the case of birds specifically are known as pecking orders.  Thus to the extent that wealth sets up a “pecking order” in human society, this seemingly innate desire for power emerges as a desire for wealth among human beings.  Wealth thus appears to be an approbatory value, inasmuch as society generally approves of wealth-seeking activity.
4. But wealth appears to be a commendatory value as well.  The essential feature of commendatory value is that they constitute a general social recommendation of a particular condition or activity as especially desirable.  There is abundant evidence that society values wealth to such a high degree that it receives almost universal commendation.  One recent bit of evidence comes from a poll a few years ago showing that 80% of young adults in the U.S. see “getting rich” as the main life-goal for their generation.  Comparable results presumably would be forthcoming in other industrialized countries as well.
5. This casts the wealth-seeking behavior of corporate directors and investors in a new light.  The desire for wealth motivating their professional activity is shared by other people on all levels of society.  Moreover, society treats pursuit of wealth as a desirable activity and encourages it on the part of all who are interested.  With respect to motivation, wealthy executives are no different from the rest.  They are just more successful in pursing a goal that most of us share.
6. As far as blame for our environmental crisis is concerned, accordingly, the real culprit is not the enterprising individual whose pursuit of wealth has been rewarded but rather the prevailing value of wealth itself.  If this line of analysis is basically correct, then our best hope of averting further environmental calamity is to do whatever it takes to render the social value of wealth inoperative.  To say it again more forcefully, only if wealth can be dethroned from its dominant role in current society can society be spared the fate of self-destruction.

Rendering the value of wealth inoperative

1. What would be involved in rendering the value of wealth inoperative?  Here is where the distinction among different sorts of social value comes in to play.  In its approbatory role, this value condones wealth-seeking activity.  To render wealth inoperative in this role would be to eliminate general acceptance of such activity.  Just as pleasure-seeking would be less prevalent if it were not socially condoned, so wealth-seeking would diminish if society did not approve of it. 
2. As we have seen, however, the value of wealth has commendatory status as well.  To neutralize the value in its commendatory role would amount to society’s withdrawing its blanket encouragement of wealth-seeking on the part of its members.  This would not prevent individual members from pursuing wealth, but they would do so without support from the rest of society.
3. A further step toward nullifying the value of wealth would be to establish alternative values with countervailing force.  One possible candidate here is the value of contentment, already mentioned in connection with the consumer value of acquisition.  If contentment were in force as a commendatory value, it would encourage people not only to forgo unnecessary purchases but also to avoid pursuit of unneeded wealth.
4. Given its dual force as both approbatory and commendatory, however, the value of wealth may be more deeply entrenched in society than any of the consumer values considered previously.  Thus further steps may be necessary to render it inoperative.  In our earlier comparison of the 3 types of social value, we noted that normative values exercise more influence than the others over individual behavior.  Like approbatory values, they condone certain kinds of behaviors, and like commendatory values, they encourage particular behaviors as well.  But they also impose a distinction between right and wrong, and carry penalties to discourage wrong behavior.  In order to effectively nullify the desire for wealth, values with normative force might also be needed. 
5. One value that might be effective in this regard is the normative value of equity.  Values like equity and fairness become increasingly relevant as a few individuals become able to extract more and more wealth from the economy, and as the gap between rich and poor accordingly becomes wider.  As matters stand, the distribution of wealth among countries is generally recognized as involving gross inequities.  The same may be said of its distribution within countries among different economic classes.  If equity were operative as a normative social value, people would look upon the amassing of personal wealth as wrong.  Comparable assessments might extend to corporations and other organizations bent on accumulating wealth to serve their own interests.
6. For normative strictures against amassing wealth to be effective, of course, practical penalties must be forthcoming for noncompliance.  Since these penalties would apply to economic behavior, the sanctions themselves would probably be economic in nature.  Possible examples are progressive taxes on individual incomes and boycotts of corporations with self-serving business practices.  Other examples might be less direct, like public censure of conspicuous consumption and of extravagant life-styles.
7. Needless to say, bringing about value changes of the sort we have been considering is a very tall order.  It is one thing to identify social values responsible for our environmental predicament and quite another to replace them with values conducive to ecological health.  We turn in the final lecture to examine various ways in which environmentally beneficial value changes of this sort might possibly be accomplished.