the post consumerist society

I have been reading some fairly heavy books on urbanism, which touch on modern society and the modern economy. They talk about the Ford-ist economy of mass production, and how on the ground this was followed by the consumer economy. That is, if you go round a modern western city, they are no longer based around heavy industry or indeed manufacturing things. The reek of the local brewery, tannery or linoleum works are no longer a feature of British cities.

The modern city seems to be built around satisfying the needs of a consumer society, a society that is much more about providing services and consuming goods, than it is about making old fashioned widgets that could the be distributed unchanged across the entire world.

However, on thinking about it, I think that there is now a stage beyond a society and economy based on consumer goods, to a society and economy based on consumer experience. I was watching the Made in Chelsea Come Dine with Me special, in fairness there was not a lot else on. Although the rich Chelsea residents were clearly very rich, they actually lived in quite spartan houses. Basically the houses we saw seemed to have been conventional traditional city terraced houses, where all the interior walls had been ripped out to create rooms for entertaining than stretched across the breadth and length of the entire floor of the flat. The rooms were however still fairly spartan, the basics for entertaining were all there, dining tables, chairs, large sofas, generic artwork and photos that was tasteful in an unremarkable way, but not much else.

One woman, was it Toff, or Binky, served champagne from blue china cups, all her champagne flutes had been broken at a previous party. Another, or was it the same, had guests smashing lobsters with hammers on plates.

For entertainment one person had some can-can dancers, supposedly flown in form the Moulin Rouge, while another had some elderly man in a cod Napoleonic costume demonstrating how to open a bottle of champagne with a sabre. They seemed to open a lot of bottles of champagne.

While these people were clearly very rich, their houses were relatively small, they seemed to have relatively few possessions, unless they rented mountains of storage which seemed unlikely, but they were spending a lot of money on their lifestyle. Even a low key dinner party was vastly expensive.

These people may not be exactly typical, but I think that they are an extreme example of where Western society is at at the moment. Many people are living in a post scarcity society. There is no point in buying any more physical goods, our houses are full, we don’t have the time to read ,or watch, or wear, or whatever, what we do have.

What we do want, is to subcontract out the elements of our lives that we cannot be bothered with. So we will willingly pay people to cook for us, or make coffee for us, or entertain us, or clean for us, or style our kitchens, or invest our money.

The modern economy is increasingly based on a Disney style attempt to attract and amuse, while we become disengaged tourists in our own lives.