Shopping
Item No. 7
“Consuming items and more items all the time serves as a core part of an economic system built to grow through the marketing of goods and services to buy. ”Shopping is the activity of purchasing goods and consumables from stores. A shopping excursion as an activity is a ritual part of the culture of consuming items. Consuming items and more items all the time serves as a core part of an economic system built to grow through the marketing of goods and services to buy. Thus, those living in this system gain status and joy from the activity of shopping. Even just window-gazing. A shopping excursion, then, serves the purpose both to purchase goods but also to enjoy social time with friends or family. A mother and daughter, for instance, may make a trip to “a mall” on a “shopping spree.” Or a group of friends might do the same. Teenagers, for example, might join a group and head to the mall. Romantic partners and spouses may make shopping into an outing. During this time, the mother and daughter–or friends–or partners or spouses–may make their way through department stores, and other stores next to each other in a large indoor (or outdoor) structure.The purchasing of things while shopping enhances the social experience of the mother and daughter–or group of friends. Or romantic partners. We feature shopping this season as current applications for in-person shopping are waning, online shopping experiences are growing, and concerns about consumerism are putting a dent in the shopping experience just for the sake of the experience.
What will we do if we’re not shopping? We might be left with a longing for a mindless thing to do. We might feel nostalgia for the act of buying. Are our hearts by now wired for consuming? Will we need to re-wire our brains for new kinds of gratification? See: The ( Death of a) Thing--A Thing. Without shopping, will we go to something like a throwback activity to fill our time? Gardening, maybe? Consider author Olivia Laing’s reflection on John Milton’s famous poem, Paradise Lost for a moment: “Despite its title, Paradise Lost is not exactly nostalgic. The garden serves as a kind of lodestar, an experience of nurture and richness that cannot be dismantled and might in the future be reinstated. Adam and Eve mourn their losses, grieve what won’t continue, but when eviction comes, when the cherubim gather like mist rising from a river, when they are taken by the hand and led to Eden’s gate, they look back, drop a tear, and then turn resolutely round. The final line swells with possibility. ‘The World was all before them.’ Whatever they have suffered, whatever damage has been done, the future lies open ahead.” See: (A Garden Against Time: In Search of A Common Paradise by Olivia Laing).
Other specifications:
Consider residual effects. Also, on average, people apparently spend, about $77,000 a year on buying things. So if we’re not shopping, we’ll need another way to use our money–or we’ll need to create another way of being together economically–(see Lewis Hyde, The Gift) in addition to finding new ways to spend our time.