How many commercial advertisements do we encounter in a day? The oceanographer Jacques Cousteau did a fascinating experiment: between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., as he walked around Paris, he counted every ad he encountered. He said: "Whenever someone tried to sell me something I did not need, I pressed a counter. By day's end I had pressed it 183 times."In university marketing classes, the instructor waves his arms and passionately tells students: "If you want to persuade people to buy your products and services, you must do everything to put them into an excited state—move them, excite them, make them tense, depressed, anxious, or afraid, because in a calm state people have no desire to open their wallets."Our society today has sunk deep into consumerism. Each of us is surrounded every day by all kinds of ads, with many people pitching goods and services. We are often persuaded into suddenly feeling we really need some product or service; after actually buying it, we set it aside and, after a while, forget we bought it.Holidays are especially moments of consumption carnival: the price of roses soars on Valentine's Day and Women's Day. Should we buy our partner a bouquet costing 288, 388, 588, 1,888, or 16,888 yuan to show we care? If we do not, will she be disappointed? Will she be upset with us?Other children wear Nike and Adidas or even better sneakers and sportswear; should we buy our child a set? A classmate bought a luxury car—should we buy one too? Should we move into a roomier, more comfortable house?Late at night we lie awake, anxious about our insufficient earning power. We complain that fate is unfair and try every means to make money, with no rest even on holidays. We have no time to exercise, no time to take our loved ones and children out to see the scenery. Life is full of stressful things, our hearts are filled with frustration, and over time we become depressed. We complain about everything—about family not being considerate enough, even about strangers on the street being too noisy.Consumerism is like an invisible hand gripping most drifters tightly. Governments make all sorts of policies to stimulate consumption, boosting the economy and easing state pressure; merchants run promotions, their hawking accompanied by song and dance to stimulate our ears and eyes; neighbors who buy new things never forget to show off, making us feel like failures.
Jacques Cousteau was an idealist who, in his essay "The Consumer Society Is Our Enemy," romantically hoped government and society would build mechanisms to resist the tide of consumerism—not realizing that consumerism is precisely the inner logic of modern social development; if government did not rely on consumption to drive the economy, its rule would be at risk.Only we individuals can resist the consumerist tide; we cannot rely on society. I never attend class reunions, refuse to join class groups, and even dislike show-offy people visiting my home—I have "inhumanely" blocked from my contacts those acquaintances who run pyramid schemes or love to show off, so they cannot reach me. Simply because I do not want to be immersed with them in consumerism, do not want their company, and do not want their anxiety to infect me; my life does not need this noise, and I do not regard these acquaintances as friends worth cherishing.After the pandemic, a wave arose on Twitter; I forget its exact name, but roughly the theme was that life is lived only once and we refuse to waste it. Now employees in many European, American, and Asian countries have staged a wave of resignations. The reason is simple: the pandemic made them realize that the life they had lived to cater to consumerism was too hard and not worth it. Now they want a simple, frugal life; they do not need so much money, do not need to work so hard, and do not need to buy expensive, worthless extra education for their children—such education, as everyone knows, brings no real benefit and only makes children more miserable.In the commercial age, healthcare is also a kind of consumption, and a high-cost one. People will buy all kinds of expensive medical services, yet the results may be no better than adjusting diet and routine on their own. But who is willing to sit still and think about it?In this age of advertising noise, our IQ is clearly insufficient; there is always someone exploiting human weakness to persuade us to buy goods or services. Our most precious time is thus wasted. What is life? Life is simply every minute and second that belongs to us."High life pressure" is the phrase I hear most at work. But why do we have so much pressure? Are we truly unable to eat or keep warm? For the vast majority of Chinese today, food and clothing are no problem; the problem is that we cannot calm our hearts or escape the consumerist trap.Unless it is absolutely necessary, I now do not consume. For me, apart from food being an absolute necessity, nothing else is. I need not buy clothes—my wardrobe is full enough; one phone lasts me ten years. I often wear twenty-yuan "old Beijing" cloth shoes, which are durable. A light diet costs little. I need not be led by the nose by this noisy society; any traditional or invented holiday is just an ordinary day to me. There are people in this world who live like this, even minimizing electricity and gas use, so their spending is even lower and they are kinder to the earth.Only by not following trends and not being swallowed by the consumerist tide can we have a true self and live more easily and joyfully. Most people live too passively, chasing trends their whole lives and being led by the big environment, unable to bear others looking down on them—though in fact no one truly pays attention to us; we only imagine they are mocking us.If a person can successfully resist consumerism, his pressure is reduced by at least two-thirds. The single-minded scholars and scientists who outperform most people are simply unaffected by consumerism; they retreat into their studies, shut out the world, and immerse themselves in their work. Most of us are no less intelligent; what ordinary people lack is the resolve to resist outside temptation.