Dear editor,
There’s too much out there already. I’m online shopping and overspending. I can’t say exactly when it started, it crept up on me sometime after I started my current office job. I’m reading promotional emails at lunch and browsing my socials and Amazon after dinner. I am getting at least one new package every day.
The worst part is I’ll start browsing for something that I think I need to buy, like tablecloths, and end up with a couple of belts. I’ll forget about the tablecloth until the next day and it happens again. Money can get tight when I need it unexpectedly or for a social obligation. It all seems so wasteful and I’m feeling guilty. What can I do?
Thank you,
Patricia.
Dear Patricia,
You are a human being. There is a side to our nature that is thoughtful, caring, cooperative and holistic. This is where the guilt stems from. Then there is another side that is impulsive, greedy, hungry and competitive. This is where the overconsumption stems from.
It is a deafening fact that we exist in an economic system that appeals to the worst side of our nature and it makes us miserable. We do not choose these circumstances but we are wise to understand them.
In Lacanian terms, what is happening is repetition stemming from a lack. In the process of becoming fully developed subjective individuals, a split develops between conscious and unconscious, ourselves and others, who we think we are and who we really are. The resulting void is the lack that causes desire.1 When you intend to buy one thing only to buy something else, as in a trance—that is not important here. It may feel as though you are filling a void with that flash of dopamine that is transmitted once your item is on its way. But this is a void that cannot be filled, it can only be distracted from and kept away at a distance. The impossibility of complete satisfaction will drive repetition, resulting in deflation upon realization that the void remains.
Knowing this won’t fix your problem but hopefully it helps break the current pattern of repetition. Scroll to the bottom of those promotional emails and unsubscribe yourself from all of them. Replace browsing time with another activity, preferably off-phone. Make a conscious effort to buy exclusively from brick and mortar stores, where possible.
Consider Heraclitus: “Always having what we want may not be the best good fortune. Health seems sweetest after sickness, food in hunger, goodness in the wake of evil, and at the end of daylong labour, sleep.”2 Once novelty, need and planning are incorporated into your purchases, they will feel gratifying once more.
In sols,
Your editor.
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