on guilt and impulse buying

Money's a great and terrible thing. I love it when I have it but when I have it I spend it and then need more. Being lazy, privileged and having to go between Brussels, Brighton and London at awkward intervals during the summer means that I can't get a regular job now I'm on the continent. Although I worked at a newspaper for free I don't have a penny to show for it (goddamn internships!). I'm currently babysitting - and feel live I've regressed back to a 14 year old. Still, it pays well, considering all you have to do is put a kid to bed then sit in a stranger's house and watch their tv.

I've earned close to 100 euros in a week (not bad!) and that means I've had to spend some of it, especially because I never went clothes shopping as a student (booze or clothes - you choose!). Going to the H&M in Rue Neuve in Brussels and buying a skirt on sale and a bag on impulse (not even on sale - argh!) actually made me feel guilty. I had to stop everything and think about it for a while, and felt pretty bad whilst and after buying the items. It only came to a grand total of 30 euros.

Why would that be? It's a nice skirt and a nice bag. I'll definitely use both of them, and well (I'm the kind of person who overwears everything if I like it). I'm earning money - it sounds amateur-ish, but I've got plenty of babysitting lined up. Yep, definitely sounds amateur-ish. I also love stuff. I'm such a consumer. What's my big problem?

Being a University of Sussex student, I studied theory by neo-Marxist Herbert Marcuse concerning the consumer culture. His 'One Dimensonal Man' book is difficult - I didn't even read all of it, although I was supposed to - but once you get the ideas right it's really interesting, and quite enlightening. The basic idea I grasped is that the Capitalist consumer culture propagates commodities which are 'false' needs - such as fashion clothes, fast food, gadgets, etc. H&M skirts and bags. Pretty much everything, it seems. According to Marcuse, us humans who live in this society are quite superficial in the sense that we have false needs, which means we buy shit to satisfy these needs. The consumer culture gives us the illusion that if we buy x, y or z we'll be more complete, therefore we NEED x, y and z. Of course, x, y and z are only bits of junk which give you a smidgen of gratitude until you need more. Marcuse then goes on to say that 'true' needs are satisfied by higher things, such as art.

This is what I gathered at least. The art thing I'm not so sure about, to be honest, because although I like to think of myself as an art aficionado, I maintain that the art world is pretty pretentious and a lot of 'great' art is only 'great' because the artist knows the right people. I agree with the first bit of Marcuse's theory though. Think about it: before you buy that shirt - or gadget, or whatever it is that you want to buy - you saw and love in a shop, you can't really stop thinking about it. You imagine how great everything is going to be once you have it. You realise that it'll cost money but it's worth it because object x will make your life better. Once you get it, you think 'wow, this is great' - and after a couple days, even though you don't really want to admit it, you think 'now what'. You start looking around for something else to buy. The 'now what' is the glimpse we have of our consumer-culture false needs.

Maybe that's why I felt guilty. I was thinking about that skirt for a couple days and now I have it I think - was it really worth thinking about that much? My life hasn't really changed as much as I thought it would in that pre-consumer-delerium I was in. The impulse buy bag was pretty much the same thing. Ah well, it's the society we live in, isn't it - which is in my view, pretty impossible to escape. May as well buy lots of shit to make me feel better about it.