Consumer attitude

“We are what we consume.” What an excellent ontological assumption. In the spirit of descriptive, not prescriptive, social science, this really is dead on. We judge others by what clothes they wear, by their preferences, by what they choose to spend their money and time on. And isn’t it great? What do we have that is more limited than money and time? Not relationships. We can make all the friends we want. Not education. We don’t have a shortage on what we can learn. Certainly not enjoyment. We don’t have only a certain number of utils in our lifetime, and once they’re used up, we can achieve no more satisfaction. But time and money is in short supply. There is only 24 hours in a day, and there is only a certain amount of money in our bank account. So, spending our time and money is essentially making priorities. If I spend my time watching TV rather than studying, it shows I value television over grades. If I spend my money sending my kids to college rather than buying a new truck (shout out to my dad), then I value my child more than a truck.
The critique, then, of this ontology comes in each individual’s ability to manage his time and money. Of course I would rather have good grades than watch whatever is on television. But I may not manage my time in a way to express that. Not everyone acts in his or her best long-term interest, which we all have a pretty good handle on. And if we don’t, it’s because we either simply put it out of our mind thus not think about it, or we don’t realize our potential. Once we do have a clear understanding of our long-term interests, the goal then would becomes to make our short-term interests match up with our long-term interests. Enter now other disciplines in the social sciences like economics, and more specifically accounting, which is a branch of economics. These help us understand our goals over time. After short- and long-term interests harmonize, everything we do in the “now” will contribute to the “later.”
The dark, unclear side of the consumer attitude is that our being is limited to what is available to buy. If we truly are defined by what we consume or buy, then we are limited in our identity development by what consumables are available. We are free to make ourselves what we wish, but are nevertheless limited by what resources we have to spend in order to “consume” our identity. And because we consume one thing, we are not able to consume another. Hence, the true being is defined not by what we consume, but by what we don’t consume.