Existential dread drives conspicuous consumption beyond rational calculation.
Evidence
The findings of these experiments are inexplicable if people make economic decisions based solely on rational considerations. Rather, they confirm that managing existential terror underlies our insatiable desire for money and the urge to splurge, and they corroborate Tennessee Williams’s observation in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that “the human animal is a beast that dies and if he’s got money he buys and buys and buys and I think the reason he buys everything he can buy is that in the back of his mind he has the crazy hope that one of his purchases will be life everlasting.” — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 456
Categorization
- SEED: The Tennessee Williams quote is a perfect anchor for an essay on consumerism as death-denial, contrasting economic rational-choice models with terror management theory.
- XREF: connects to: The compulsion to consume everything newest replaces rational need with anxiety about falling behind; Self-alienation in property explains ownership’s intensity beyond mere utility. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 146; Rational administration of consumption masks the loss of individual control over life decisions — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 186 (+4 more)
Related
- Great wealth removes the distractions that normally mask existential emptiness. (similarity 0.87)
- The compulsion to consume everything newest replaces rational need with anxiety about falling behind (similarity 0.85)
- Rational administration of consumption masks the loss of individual control over life decisions (similarity 0.79)