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All the things money can’t buy

This week in the UK the RBS bank system crashed due – it is rumoured – to the online shopping activity of Cyber Monday. This followed Black Friday in the US where people stabbed, trampled, pepper-sprayed and punched each other in the pursuit of discounted goods.

While this was happening, the news reported that, according to the Government, people dipping into hard-earned and often fragile savings to shop for the holidays was a good thing because it helped the economy.

I just had to wonder at the cognitive dissonance – to borrow a phrase from psychologists – of it all. We know in our hearts that this materialistic nonsense is ugly and destructive. We know it’s bad for us, bad for the environment and bad for society. But like the worst kind of addicts, we don’t seem to be able to stop.

Economists and politicians love to tell us that acquisitiveness – the impulse to buy and possess things – is natural to human beings. But in reality out-of-control materialism is more like a disease. Had this disease infected our hunter-gatherer ancestors most of us would probably not be here, since having enough for everyone is what helped our culture grow and expand.

Our Sisyphean search for ‘things’ to make us happy, in fact, has serious impacts on our health and well-being.

For example, in one study, participants were given a problem of a hypothetical water shortage in a well shared by four people, including themselves to deal with. The water users were identified either as consumers or individuals. Guess what?

The “consumers” rated themselves as less trusting of others to conserve water, less personally responsible and less able to work in partnership with the others in dealing with the crisis. Seeing yourself as a “consumer”, the authors concluded, “did not unite; it divided.”

Another recent paper highlighted the dark side of materialism. It found that those who use material goods to define success – or who use shopping to alleviate unhappiness – get trapped in a “loneliness loop” where they shop to relieve feelings of loneliness but find that shopping makes the loneliness worse.

That’s important to health because loneliness doesn’t just impact our mental health; it’s also associated with cardiovascular disease, hypertension, dementia and premature death.

Another way that loneliness can impact our health, according to the report The Lonely Society by the Mental Health Foundation, is by making it harder for us to control our habits and behaviour. Lonely people drink more alcohol, take more drugs, have unhealthier diets (and more eating disorders) and take less exercise than those who are socially contented.

It is a major public health issue across the developed world – and we seem determined to fuel it rather than fight it.

So if stuff doesn’t make us happy what does? A study earlier this year gave us a clue. At a conference for the Society for Personality and Social Psychologists earlier researchers reported that investing in experiences rather than material possessions was the key to happiness.

Holidays, spa days, massages, going to the theatre or even a nice meal give us more satisfaction than (too often) disposable items like clothes or jewellery. That’s not news – previous studies have shown the same thing.

According to the researchers experiences give us memories, things we can talk about to others and people get more enjoyment out of things they can talk about. I would argue that a fulfilling purchase has an emotional or sensory element as well that helps ‘fix’ it in our hearts and minds.

As the holiday season gets into full swing, give yourself permission to believe that less can be more. A deepening connection with others including family, extended family, colleagues, neighbours and friends, meaningful, quality gifts instead of junk, food that nourishes rather than depletes, and days to remember can help set the tone for a healthier year to come for us all.

Pat Thomas, Editor