This post is spawned from a realization (it is nothing new) that I had after listening to a commercial. The commercial discussed not having enough room in the car for the children and all their stuff. Solution: Buy a bigger car of course. Accommodate
Now, my girlfriend can attest to my accommodationist consumption behaviors. Hopefully not to the extent as that above, but I still do it. I have trouble studying at home, so I Accommodate myself by going to a coffee shop to study and inevitably (and responsibly) buy a cup or two. This is a small amount, and relatively important for my lifestyle, but it is often accommodation consumption.
We have been duped. We have been marketed a demand that is not really there. It is a figment of my imagination. If I was in a pinch, I could go without coffee and still get my work done. But I don't want to. So I buy into the consumption economy rather than the saving economy.
Now this is not a post on privilege verses anti-privilege. I am not advocating (here anyways) for total economic deprivation-stripping down to the most basic needs. What I'm advocating is keeping a life-style in check, recognizing the patterns of consumption. Are you accommodating your life to a demand, or are you enhancing your life with your consumption.
We are slaves to the demand it seems, even in the smallest ways. Maybe we should have a limitationist view. Again, this is not to cut everything out of life, and throw away privilege, but for the listener to the ad mentioned above, maybe the situation would be better handled if they stopped buy the children so much stuff. Then, they wouldn't consume on a false demand of their children-probably spoiling them-and they would then save even more money by keeping the current car and gas mileage.
Again, this is not new, but sometimes the old needs to be redundantly said so that we keep training our minds against the prevailing assumptions. The assumption of accommodationist consumption (can anybody say School House Rock with that rhyme?) prevails in our demand creation economy. I need to counter this assumption, checking to see my motivation for my consumption.
Permalink
