Aspiring to a better image of self-esteem

Lori Anderson urges people to drop out of the consumer culture and not buy into luxury goods as a mark of their worth

We’ve all seen them. Their natural habitat includes the airport, in the first or business class lane, of course: here their diamond encrusted, scarlet, manicured claws adjust the drape of their Prada shoulder bag, while their other half’s Rolex-draped wrist navigates an upright battalion of matching Louis Vuitton luggage.

I usually shudder and think “phew, tacky”. But, guess what? A Rolex, a Prada/Mulberry handbag and Louis Vuitton luggage and a clutch of diamonds have been revealed to be high on the list of must-have items that secure status in the modern world.

Now, there are other things on the list that I would not dream of cocking a snook at, such as an Aston Martin, a salary of £63,938, having £15,000 in savings.

We are Scots, savings are never a bad thing, we ca’ canny. But if these things ever fell into my lap through some sort of Machiavellian contract (dearest diablo I am open to all offers), then I would enjoy them for how they enriched my life and only that.

But as for status symbols, who cares? Well, the aforementioned poll shows that many people do indeed care and judge wealth and success by how much stuff we have before we die.

Hmm, didn’t anyone pay attention to those pithy films/sayings about what we would say on our deathbeds? Friends, Romans, countrymen, it was never about the toys.

Stuff lust, let’s all lust for life; doesn’t anyone listen to the music anymore?

Whatever happened to the spirit of the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK? Or, for the hippies out there, Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s Teach Your Children Well and for the intellectuals, Bertrand Russell, who said: “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”

I’ve a soft spot for Thorstein Veblen, who wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class and who explained: “It is true of dress, in even a higher degree than of most other items of consumption, that people will undergo a very considerable degree of privation in the comforts or the necessaries of life in order to afford what is considered a decent amount of wasteful consumption; so that it is by no means an uncommon occurrence, in an inclement climate, for people to go ill clad in order to appear well dressed.”

Oh dear, my rhetoric is falling on deaf ears, it appears that 14 per cent of consumers in the UK have bought something just to appear more well off than they really are.

“Self” and “esteem”, two small words and for many an unfillable chasm. Our sense of self can so often fall over into selfishness but yet, from it comes an ontological strength: if we truly know who we are, we won’t need to rack up debt to prove to others who we might be.

Sigmund Freud and his nephew, the father of public relations Edward Bernays, are the unacknowledged wizards behind this curtain of consumerism.

For it was Freud who recognised that items, products and inanimate objects could be perceived by people to possess qualities and attributes that were not there.

His nephew took these philosophical ideas and injected them into corporate America, where he successfully rebranded propaganda as “public relations” and set about shaping how people thought about specific consumer products.

His most infamous achievement was to convince a generation of American women to smoke. In the 1920s, there was a taboo against women smoking, so Bernays cleverly decided to link cigarettes to the movement for women’s rights by hiring actresses to light up cigarettes during the New York Parade, which they declared were not just cigarettes but “Torches of Freedom”.

The idea caught fire and, for many women, smoking became a political act.

Anyone watching Adam Curtis’s brilliant documentary series, The Century of the Self, will shudder as he explained how, in the early 20th century, the average consumer purchased items based on necessity and replaced them only at the end of their natural life. Manufacturers were genuinely concerned that as products lasted longer, consumers would stop buying and that the economy would grind to a halt.

It was advertising agencies that came to their rescue by harnessing the new ideas in psychology and psychoanalysis and tapping into the subconscious desires of consumers. People no longer shopped out of necessity but desire, primarily to keep up with the Joneses. Buying wasn’t just about the item purchased, but also the artificial aura in which it was wrapped; will a Rolex tell the time 5,000 times better than a Timex?

Don’t get me wrong, if you admire the craftsmanship and style of a high-quality watch and can afford it, then I’d be the first to open the jeweller’s door, but don’t stride through the doorway simply because the platinum bracelet means membership to an elite club.

So, if not from shiny, new and expensive products, how should we derive our self-esteem and status?

By living an authentic life, by being true to one’s own self and applying the gift of discernment, by trying to navigate through the treacherous currents of contemporary life without succumbing to avarice and envy, by being kind and listening carefully to the wise words of two rather different points of view. The words of the Desiderata say: “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.”

I will leave the last words to that dirty blond Tyler Durden from the Fight Club, played by Brad Pitt: “You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank.

“You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f****** khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”