How to Be Happy #35: Stop Buying Things!

And stop watching, looking at, or listening to advertisements of all sorts. Why shun advertisements and the purchases they encourage? One because the entire goal of advertising is to make us feel inadequate or inferior if, heaven forbid, we don’t own the particular good or service they are shilling. And two, owning said particular good or having said particular service does not make us feel, as implied or promised, the least bit superior or even adequate.

That’s one of the points Mark Manson makes in his article “Being Special Isn’t So Special.” Manson writes that, “when you study marketing, the first thing you learn is that fear sells. If you make a person feel inadequate or inferior, they will shut up and buy something in order to feel better.” Thus, capitalism “promotes a society where people constantly feel inadequate and inferior.”

Manson also notes how people traveling to third-world countries often make banal statements about how the citizens there are happier and so would we be “if we knew how to live with less.” He then quickly debunks such statements:

This is completely wrong. Poor people in developing societies aren’t happier, they’re simply less anxious and less stressed. People in the developing world don’t care how many friends you have or if you bought the latest hot item or not. They’re much more family- and community-oriented. They’re also more socially accepting and less socially anxious simply because they have to be. It’s how they survive.

Referencing philosopher Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety, Manson describes how changing from a society where people had “no mobility or opportunity” and thus “no stress about getting ahead” to a meritocratic society amounted to the proverbial one step forward and two steps back:

In a meritocracy, if you’re poor, or you gain success and then lose it, it’s not an accident. It’s worse. It’s your fault.You’re the failure. You’re the one who lost everything. And this causes people to live shackled with a constant fear of inadequacy; all the world’s hustle and bustle motivated by a baseline status anxiety.

The bottom line, Manson writes, is “simply being content with what we have isn’t good enough anymore. In fact, for some it’s tantamount to giving up.” And then there’s the internet:

When you combine a capitalist system with an infinite flow of information, a side effect is a population who is reminded of the infinite amount of ways that it’s not good enough.

Manson’s lesson is simple: “Slow down. Breathe. Smile. You don’t need to prove anything to anybody.”

For this lesson on how to be happy, that translates to implementing your debunkvertising [debunking ads] routine. For example, if Nike tells you to “Just do it,” say “No thanks, You do it.” If Gillette tells you their product is “the best a man can get,” tell Gillette “who needs the best?” When MasterCard tells you, “there are some things money can’t buy, for everything else there’s MasterCard,” say, “I’ll stick with the things money can’t buy, thank you very much.”

I have tried this myself and am already feeling much less inadequate and inferior. In fact, it kind of makes watching advertisements more fun as you focus on outing their ridiculously intense insidiousness. In fact, debunkvertising might qualify as one of the simple, everyday pleasures of life that Manson recommends indulging in for happiness. And get this: no credit card required.