Why do we ‘need’ the newest thing? Is that where people get their joy?

By David McElroy · December 15, 2011

It’s a modern consumer gadget phenomenon. A company such as Apple will announce an updated version of last year’s product, and people rush out to buy the new model — while their perfectly functioning old product is still just fine. Why?

I’ve thought about this before, but it’s on my mind today because of a discussion related to Wednesday’s story about iPads in schools. A commenter brought up the question of why people today seem to feel the need for the latest of everything. Why is it that a 10-year-old car is unacceptable to some people, even if it still runs perfectly and has no other problems? Why is furniture that’s perfectly functional tossed out for something new? And why was that iPhone 4 from last year replaced in October with an iPhone 4S?

I suppose you can explain a lot of this by calling it an appeal to fashion — in consumer societies that are fabulously wealthy by any standard the world has known before. By historical standards, we have excess wealth in our pockets, excess time on our hands and excess choices to spend them on. I haven’t studied consumer psychology on this, but I have a theory about what causes people to replace things so quickly. Let me run it by you and you tell me what you think.

I suspect that many people in our world have learned to get their joy from the things they own. At the same time, the things that have brought great meaning to people in the past are frequently considered passé. Much of society looks down on religious faith, for instance. Educational experiences have been considerably dumbed down from half a century ago. And the increasing pace of modern life means that many people make other things a priority over investing time in emotional relationships. As the important things and values of the past have faded, shiny new toys have come to prominence — fed by the consumer economy and a government that believes in giving people incentives to spend.

I don’t mean to imply that I think all spending is bad, even spending on new gadgets. I have an iPhone, but it’s last year’s model. I have an iPad, but it’ll be two years old in a few more months. And my iMac — which is my primary work tool — is about four years old now. (That’s a dinosaur in computer terms, isn’t it?) The car I drive is 13 years old. I don’t have any furniture newer than about 15 years old — and that’s the “new” stuff. By other people’s standards, my things aren’t exactly cutting edge, but I do have some nice things. It’s just that I have a mix of newer things in areas in which there’s a pragmatic reason and older things in areas in which it just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t always mix and match beautifully to show off for company, but it works for me.

So I’m left with three questions:

1. Would the current consumer obsession with buying the “latest and greatest” have existed without a free market to create the conditions that make excess wealth possible?
2. Is the drive to gain more things — bigger things, better things, more expensive things — driving Americans to work harder? And is that in turn damaging the personal relationships that make life worth living? And is the weakening of those close personal relationships — husband-wife, parent-child, friend-friend, etc. — part of what drives us to want more “stuff”? In other words, is this a self-reinforcing cycle?
3. Would many Americans today be better off lowering their standard of living at least somewhat? For instance, if a husband and wife are both running themselves ragged earning money to maintain a certain lifestyle — enough so that they can’t maintain a quality relationship with each other or with kids — are they losing more than the lifestyle is worth? Would it be better to reduce income — by 10 percent, 20 percent or even 50 percent — in order to change their lifestyle and actually experience life?

I’d like to know how you would answer those questions, but I’m going to give you my answers, too. I think the first is obvious. Yes, it’s the market that allows us to have wealth, but what we choose to do with the excess wealth (and whether we choose to pursue materialism) is our decision, not the market’s fault if we choose poorly. Second, yes, I think the cycle of materialism is self-reinforcing. As long as you’re a part of it, trying to get ahead and achieve great financial “stability” and “security” — concepts that I don’t think ultimately are especially useful in a world you can’t control — you’re going to end up with lousy relationships, despite the best intentions. And, yes, I think reducing lifestyle — and reducing your work output — is the way for many people to have a better life. It has the additional benefit of strengthening your relationships and giving you additional time to make the world a better place in other ways — if you make wise decisions otherwise.

So those are my answers to the questions. What are yours? And what’s your balance between driving for excess and living in deprivation? Everyone has to find a balance he’s comfortable with. If you have the modern American upper-middle class lifestyle — which requires that you work all the time — you’re going to pay a price. It’s a tradeoff. Is it worth it to you? It’s not to me.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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