WANT

I've suddenly realized that WANT is good.

Environmentalists, anti-consumerists, Adbusters, and the people buried deep in the "protest movement" all tell us otherwise. Want is bad, they say. Our wants are destroying the planet. Our wants are enslaving the children of third world nations in sweat shops. The capitalist system manipulates us into wanting things we don't need. You can end all this exploitation and death by eliminating your unnecessary wants.

Then there's the Buddhists and their four noble truths. All life is suffering (or dissatisfaction, disquietude, etc -- depending on your translation). And how do we stop that suffering? It's want that causes grief. Kill your cravings and desires. Want is bad.

Allow me to humbly disagree -- the Buddha and the anti-consumerists don't know what they're talking about.

(Can you humbly contradict the Buddha?)

Want is absolutely essential to our existence. We are biologically programmed to want. If you genuinely don't want anything, then you're dead. Desire, craving, longing, hunger, lust, passion, WANT -- these are all good things, as long as they're channelled properly. Want is like fire. You can use it to cook food and keep warm, or you can burn your house down.

Picture the poor bastard who whips himself with a branch to repress his sexual urges. Inevitably, he starts to get aroused by the whipping. He learns to want the pain, and craves it the way he used to crave pleasure. The masochistic misery becomes a perverse badge of pride. Squish down longing in one area and it pops up some place else.

You can't kill want. It's the specific things we want that we have to watch out for. Maybe I don't need three cars, six iPods, and seventeen TV sets. The anti-consumer folks have this part right. Over consumption goes hand-in-hand with our consumer culture and the destruction of the planet.

All of this might seem like a purely semantic distinction, but it's not. Target the thing, not the want, and the environmental movement will have greater success. As meat machines, we crave so much -- we want sex, we want friends, we want to fit in, we want a safe community, we want to have fun, we want to be happy. Want is good.

But advertisers know what we want. Every ad in existence attempts to hijack our basic desires. You'll be happy, if you drink this beer. You'll get laid, if you buy this car. You'll be safe, if you buy this security system. You'll have fun, if you watch this movie. They take our wants and pervert them, objectify them.

Want to undermine capitalist consumerist advertising? Forget attacking the desire. Instead, try this:

* * *

1. Expose human desires for what they are. Wants expressed openly and clearly lose some of their power. Advertisers try to conceal desire even as they use it. They'd never say:

"I want to express my love for my wife. I guess I'd better go buy her an expensive diamond ring."

They're never that obvious. Instead, the ad says, "Tell her you'd marry her all over again!" The man hands over the bauble and the woman swoons. Our desires are hinted at, only enough to make us insecure.

2. Attack the thing. Show how the product does not actually satisfy the desire.

"The ring made her happy for fifteen minutes, but I really don't feel any closer to her. A diamond isn't going to save my marriage. It didn't really express my feelings."

Love isn't in a ring. I don't give love with a ring. I give it through myself.

3. Offer an alternative way of fulfilling the desire that doesn't involve a product.

"Maybe if I just sat down and talked to her, shared my feelings with her regularly, I could develop some genuine closeness."

* * *

In consumer society, physical objects (products) have become a replacement for emotional interaction. We don't interact with each other or with our own insides. Instead, we focus our feelings into a purchase -- a "present" or a "card" or a status symbol. The object speaks for our desires, because the want itself is too great, too complex, too internal, too vague. That's the appeal of the physical thing -- it pretends to contain the entirety of our want.

"My true identity will be brought into focus by the frames of my new glasses!"

But identity is deeper and more real than that. We're always forgetting that we, as individuals, are the centre of our experience. Our whole world is based on the principle that what you buy is who you are. They want us to put our identity outside of ourselves.

This is partly where the hollowness of modern life comes from -- all our relationships are with things, not people. Direct contact with another human being has almost become taboo. It's like germ theory, but for emotions. Feelings expressed directly are seen as infectious, better expressed through an object. How embarrassing and awkward to be openly emotional.

People give a Hallmark card to express their sympathies. The feeling is in the card. And the card contains a poem someone else wrote for you. It would be much more genuine and touching to go up to the person and speak your own words, no matter how awkward.

"I just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about what you're going through. You have my sympathies. It must be extremely difficult for you."

Doesn't this have more value than spending five bucks on a card and signing it?

Art is an example of genuine interaction with one's self. When I create or write something myself, my emotions pour into it. My painting is so much more vital to me than anything I can buy. It's a personal symbol, it's real. It's a "product", true, but I made it out of my own nature. It's closer to me than any marketing group can ever get.

Is it tacky to write your own card, your own poem, and pass it on? It's definitely more risky, and more genuine. I think this is why "do it yourself" culture seems to be picking up steam. Something a person spends time making themselves feels more valuable than something they merely buy.

Pity the people who can only express themselves through the things they purchase. The art of the credit card. What are you going to "create" today, besides debt?

I am no extremist. Go out and buy stuff, if you need it. I own and love my iPhone. But I'm almost embarrassed to admit I have one. Is it a guilty pleasure for me? Are all my wants repressed, occasionally sneaking out into the open with the occasional extravagant purchase? Almost definitely. Plus I love being able to check my email wherever I go.

I get the feeling advertisers are glad anti-consumer protesters attack WANT instead of THINGS. Our desires are evolutionary, biological, programmed deep into us. Killing our WANT is as impossible as living without lungs.

You will want, and you will always want. All of the things for sale, on the other hand, are relatively new. There is the Achilles' heel of consumerism. Aim your weapons there.