Low self-esteem & materialism goes hand in hand

Then , my self esteem must be quite high .... I do still get a shoppers high though . I sense some truth in this , but it is quite an oversimplification to say this .... perhaps religious belief also plays into this , and coping strategy skills . I have noticed those people who have very little coping skills are HEAVILY dependent of material wealth to compensate .... you probably have met some of them....

ClareW writes,

"...sometimes buying things just cheers you up."

Impossible to disagree. As old Sigmund pointed out, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

But you went on to conclude that "everyone knows materialism isn't going to bring you long term happiness though."

Wrong. And the point of the article - "everyone" doesn't know.

Ever heard of a criminal who wasn't motivated, using force or stratagem, to deprive others of something material?

Can you have crime at all without there being a zero-sum game [I stole it: now it's mine] in place?

Ever see modern kids who'll spend the majority of their income trying to dress like, talk like, or look like some wealthy celebrity?

Know anybody who isn't living beyond their means? If so you and they are lucky and smart.

Nearly a century ago Albert Schweitzer wrote of his concerns given the European conquest of Africa. For him, it was his opportunity to provide needed medical services and proselytize Christianity.

But what he predicted would happen did happen. Africans were uncynical. They were optimistic and inexperienced in European methods of manipulating the public. Schweitzer predicted that the various populations would be coached repeatedly to want things they never needed. It would be done to such an extent that Africans would trade their freedom, to be slaves to trivia.

Yes, sometimes really dumb purchases [the Pet Rock?] can distract people from a dull life. But in the last century both the chronic social reinforcement of insecurity became a mass art. 'Are you still having weight\skin\breath\hair\wardrobe\status problems? Well now! The "solution" to all of it is addictive acquisition!' Since we no longer actually manufacture high quality goods buying price-inflated foreign crap has become the main engine in the West.

Everybody does not get it.

Without fear of exaggeration we can count millions of credulous and simple people who simply can never compensate themselves enough by buying things.

Economic stats underscore this reality. Personal savings as opposed to compulsive spending are polar opposites. Our economy is so sunk in debt that no one honest believes that we can refloat the ship just by cutting taxes. For banks to lend there has to be a public source of wealth - savings. But what our culture, our advertisers and politicians specifically recommend is increased spending.

Ancient philosophers, both religious and secular, anticipated this problem long before anyone used either the words economics or psychology. It was meant as a caution to everyone.

The wisest folk already saw the problem.

this makes sense - low self esteem and materialism being connected. but hey sometimes buying things just cheers you up, everyone knows materialism isn't going to bring you long term happiness though

well i dont belive it
i must have low-self esteem

yea right...

was i referred to as the devil?

Very impressive post, on so many levels of honesty and introspection, including the testimonials of the um, afflicted by consumption manias.

After the insanity of the Great Depression and WW2 (during which I was born) there wasn't much thought given to avoiding the reemergence of repressed conspicuous consumption. It was a time to get silly.

Not only was optimism about future life generally linked to spending, but far too many social scientists forgot about lab work and opted to join the lucrative career path of Edward Bernays. They would become shills for industry providing advice on how to tweak unconscious human frailties to raise corporate income..

[for details see Stewart Ewen's book, "PR! The Social History of Spin."]

The basic industry pitch? "Feeling insecure? That's normal! But unnecessary! Just go buy something you don't need that we sell! You be fine! Until the next bout hits you. But that's OK too! Go buy some more of our stuff to feel better! After that, double up! Or you'll really hit bottom! We warned you!"

Admittedly, all anyone reinforced was insecurity, linked to dependency on expenditure for relief, but where would industry be without entire generations pumped down with feelings of media-conditioned inferiority, unattractiveness and unworthyness, resulting in a perfectly formed compulsion to reduce all human interaction to transactions involving money?

Granted it was parasitic but other wise so many people would have to find other ways to enjoy themselves, without key economic sectors ever profiting!.And so forth..

Without such a habitual sense of unrelatedness to each other (as Sartre said in a lighter moment - "Hell is Other People"), disdain for the natural world (a commodity and ash tray) or indifference to each others' welfare, (what have they done for me lately?) our way of life would collapse! Everybody said so.

Which is odd, because it collapsed anyway.

Thus we still treat the world as mere waste turf (to dispose of as we see fit), can't relate at all to each other as humans (but rather by accounting for potential benefits or costs), and remain largely ignorant and lost about ourselves in our selves.

But it's nice to see so many people are up to speed on what needs to be reexamined, thoroughly.

love that quote.
I definitely agree.
I work in a restaurant, making a meager wage just enough to pay for my apartment and bills. I rarely splurge and save as much as possible.
many of my coworkers flaunt their handbags and watches that they have recently acquired with their earnings... and it seems like such a waste. Sometimes it's nice to have nice things, but spending a lot of money on a designer bag gets you no closer to the top than anyone else. Sure, your bag looks couture, but you still don't have the money to back it.
Another example...
My boyfriend's infiniti was broken into last night. As most of us would be, he was distressed because his navigation and ipod were stolen. I tried to make it seem not so bad by presenting all of the outcomes that could have been much, much worse. At least he wasn't hurt. Of course that didn't really help, he is just really really concerned about those things.
I think in the same situation, I would be pissed but not as upset as it seems to be making him.

Giant House = Tiny Dick
Giant Truck = Tiny Dick
Giant Fake Titts on Wife = Tiny Dick
I drive a Geo Metro

I can see the correlation. But sometimes it's not materialism in nice, new or big things it manifests as hoarding like packratting! It's hanging on to the past or things you might need.....

in the end all people want/need is a home, food, the chance to reproduce, and love. Its a simple analysis of our basic evolutionary needs but looking cool is certainly not part of those necessities.

And don't get me wrong here, I love my iPhone 3g, my xbox 360 elite, all that crap... Electronics just get me better than people seem to. ;)

It's funny how this focuses it's attention on adolescents, I know plenty of adults who say "if I could just get that new car..." or "that big screen tv would go great over the fireplace in my 650k house that I paid the down payment on with my American express card as the lender said "don't worry" and now the payments are overwhelming my 9-5 job's paycheck, time to go bankrupt! (again).

I love my giant DVD collection

I have been telling people this for a long time. Nobody believes me. Glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks so. I'm gonna print this article out for a few people I know.

dayum

Its true. Origonaly there were those who have, those who dont have, those who go without and those who take. Now days, I believe there are far to many who have the mentality of "those who have to have".

In the past, for most cultures, food was hunted and grown naturaly through the work of those who directly consumed it. Items were made by hand for a direct purpose, practical or sentimental. Nowadays there are kids who live in upper class environments who complain about not getting the exact car they wanted for their birthday, and kids in lower class environments who are happy to just get an extra bowl of rice for their birthday.

Sadly, I would say that too many people nowdays measure their lives by what they have obtained instead of what they have done.

I believe that Chuck Palahniuk wrote Tyler Durden as someone who would never be satisfied merely having or not having, he was far too big in his own head for that. Tyler Durden seemed to be someone who took their own complacency and did what I believe we all should try to do, ask ourselves "what are you going to do about it"?

It sucks... its like, why did the banks get bailed out... but when we're late for a credit card payment, they bend us over and out of some more money. They should've given the lower and middle class all that money, because in the end... we couldnt kept the economy going and not invested in invisble money.

To the sad poster who called BS on this article because he or she had low self-esteem but was not materialistic, you have probably already realized this by now, but the artlcle did not claim that ALL low self-esteem was caused by materialism, just that materialism appeared to be ONE cause of low self-esteem. I am often baffled by the way so many people talk about self-esteem -- as though nobody should ever suffer from it. For heaven's sake, if you just did something awful to someone else, for example, you SHOULD feel low self-esteem. And I have met a pretty fair number of people over my nearly five decades on the planet who were horrible people and darned well SHOULD have had low self-esteem because everybody they knew certainly had little or or no esteem for them. Ironically, of course, such people often have incredibly HIGH self-esteem. In my experience, for example, people who don't tip waiters or waitresses, regardless of how good the service was, tend to have VERY high opinions of themselves and would be shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, to hear that all such people are fundamentally evil and unlikely to have any redeeming qualities whatsoever (that may sound a little harsh, but when I used to interview executives, watching how they treated their waiter over lunch was just about the best tool for predicting how well they would get along in a team environment I ever came across).

I can't help feeling that as the First World has increasingly run on Advertising materialism has skyrocketed. Madison Avenue has become insanely good at making people believe that they can't possibly live without stuff that 10 minutes earlier they didn't even know existed. And after being bombarded with such advertisements everywhere you look (and by the way are you as disgusted as I am about how there are now more pure advertisements during the movie previews at theaters than there are previews -- which had already become mind-suckingly long themselves?) Where was I? Oh yes -- after the thousands of hours of advertisements one has viewed before one even has his or her first job in life, it is no wonder that one feels like each purchase thereafter is part of a slow process of "catching up" with the level of possessions considered by then to be "stuff the average person has to have to be the average person." Of course, you can NEVER really catch up so...low self esteem.

"A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satifies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference......In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of mens hands."
-Karl Marx

I feel like maybe my house, transportation, and college education are a little more than materialism. It eases the philosophical pain perhaps, thanks for trying =)

"You're 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 fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."
- Tyler Durden.

Get enough crap united together and you have one mountain of immovable shit.

ewwww. convicting.

I like nice things, as I think we all do. I also own nice things, they may not be as grand as others may have, but they satisfy me. I think my self esteem is stable and well grounded. If I were to lose what I now have, I honestly wouldn't like that to happen, but I would just move on to the next experiences and rebuild from there. Stuff happens, best to go with the flow and grow.

Wicked post. Puting it into perspective.

Ah, material - the yuppie mephistopheles

haha...i live in orange county california, and i am respectably poor by any financial measure, and every once in awhile i drive by a beat up old house and wonder what if?? thanks.

....but my coffin is FULLY LOADED !

excellent post pjacobs

you reintroduce the existential question in an elegant and subtle manner.

What are we doing here? What is it all about? Is self esteem the ideal? One may have high self esteem and yet in truth be a miserable bastard that is held in low esteem by all those around him.

Most understand that material wealth, while necessary at some level for physical comfort, is ultimately not enough. Being warm and safe and well fed is necessary for happiness. Yet having more than one needs will not in itself make one happy.

And again I wonder, what is the goal? Self esteem? Happiness? Enlightenment? But alas, all is transitory, and we die.

nice picture and quote.

"...the people highest up got the lowest self esteem, the prettiest people do the ugliest things for the road to riches and diamond rings...."

- Kanye West (All Falls Down)

Given that true happiness equates to contentment, then true happiness is NOT getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got. Because if people seriously believe that aquisition makes them happy they're deluding themselves. They will allways want more than they have, and will never be satisfied. But if you set goals for yourself that normal, well adjusted people consider to be fulfilling in life: Having true friends, a good family life, a home, a job that's rewarding because it's more a labor of love than a chore, then you're already rich. I collect Einstein quotes. My favorite is the one starting with "if I give you a penny" He was an enlightened man. He knew that simply having and appreciating the gift of life has already made people richer than Kings.And that developing the inner peace that enables you to appreciate the Love already bestowed upon you with the gift of life that's key.

Well, I guess this explains BOTH my low self-esteem and my acquisition/hoarding habits.

yes it is simple...do not store up treasures on this earth...store up your treasures in heaven by doing selfless deeds...
donate your time, money, or things to people who will appreciate it..
meditate pray read holy scriptures

can't...pull...myself...awayyy...from...The...Hills...
i...want...that...bitches...dress.

Happiness is not about how much you have or how much you know its about knowing how to live life and enjoy it.
Happiness is inside of each one of us , material things dont make you happy, the only thing that you get is that you become into slave of all of your possessions.
Happiness you dont find it outside yourself is inside of you so stop looking for things to make you happy.
Enjoy what you have and stop bitching about life.
Look around and you will see that there are people with bigger problems than you.

well, if there is no self-esteem, I guess one would try to fill that void with tangible things

If you can say you have low self esteem, you probably dont have low self esteem.

Ahhh that is why I have been buying expensive jeans...

I'm gonna call bullshit on this, I have very low self-esteem, but I'm not materialistic, I'm a pretty simple person.

My grandfather grew up extremely poor much like people lived in the 1800's. He spent his entire life trying to buy the biggest and the best to prove he wasnt that dirt poor barefoot boy in ragged overalls. He also suffered depression, Alcoholism and he really screwed up my mother and her brothers. Some people are happy with nothing and some cant have enough.

very true we see this every day

I've been a Zen Buddhist for so long I can't remember what materialism is.

The implications of this go crazy deep. It effects our thinking of what is important and what isnt, what we care about, what we want... It basically distracts us while the big guys up top do what they want...

this is sort of timeless wisdom, but i suppose it's nice to have these things validated by science.

i've been liquidating all my shit on craig's list lately and there's something really cathartic about it.

The sad part is that very few people in the "First World" have any idea about this. A great time for changes, though :)

Ah materialism, the american dream. No wonder we are in the state we are in.

great post

its like the old Expression money cant buy happiness