The compulsion to consume everything newest replaces rational need with anxiety about falling behind

Evidence

The novel feature is the overwhelming rationality in this irrational enterprise, and the depth of the preconditioning which shapes the instinctual drives and aspirations of the individuals and obscures the difference between false and true consciousness. For in reality, neither the utilization of administrative rather than physical controls (hunger, personal dependence, force), nor the change in the character of heavy work, nor the assimilation of occupational classes, nor the equalization in the sphere of consumption compensate for the fact that the decisions over life and death, over personal and national security are made at places over which the individuals have no control. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 186 (#expands, via linked claim)

It is impossible to account for this without starting from an existential fact: the subject’s tendency toward alienation; the anxiety of his freedom leads the subject to search for himself in things, which is a way to flee from himself; it is so fundamental a tendency that as soon as he is weaned and separated from the Whole, the infant endeavors to grasp his alienated existence in the mirror, in his parents’ gaze. Primitive people alienate themselves in their mana, their totem; civilized people in their individual souls, their egos, their names, their possessions, and their work: here is the first temptation of inauthenticity. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Rational administration of consumption masks the loss of individual control over life decisions — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 186; Existential dread drives conspicuous consumption beyond rational calculation. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 456; Mindlessness leads to habitual or auto-pilot consumption behaviors where individuals fail to focus on the present moment. — Mindfulness through agency in health consumption … (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Rational administration of consumption masks the loss of individual control over life decisions #expands (0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 186
• Existential dread drives conspicuous consumption beyond rational calculation. #expands (0.80) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 456
• Anxiety about freedom drives subjects to alienate themselves in things #corroborates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 128
• Luxury consumption boosts self-esteem, a defense against death anxiety. #corroborates (0.78) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 447
• Materialist mentality self-reinforces through its own dissemination #expands (0.72)