We are an incredibly diverse species, representing millions of different cultures, beliefs, and ways of life. At least, we are on the outside.
We are, excepting the edges of the bell-curve, a species that exhibits the same pattern of a few learned behaviors based on the same few beliefs that we don't know we espouse. And, of course, you don't believe me. How could a person believe something that he or she doesn't know she believes?
How could she?
What kind of television programs did you watch the most of when you were very young? How long were they? Who was in them? What were they about? Was the plot different in each episode?
I am asking seriously. Please answer these questions. Write the answers down, if that helps. Put it in the comments, if you want.
So, what is your answer? Actually, it doesn't matter what your answer was. Unless your answer was "my parents didn't let me watch TV," your answer is almost certainly wrong. Among the people who did watch TV in their preschool years, the programs they think they watched the most will vary, but the programs they actually watched the most are the same. People remember watching a lot of fifteen-minute animated shows depicting various, whacky antics of oddly-shaped people or anthropomorphic animals. They remember watching half-hour shows featuring both puppets and live actors. They probably watched those as well.
In between those fifteen-minute animated TV shows and thirty-minute puppet shows, almost all television stations air a different kind of show, though, and these are incredibly formulaic. All of them are fifteen or thirty seconds long. All of them feature actors whose names and faces you would not recognize today. The vast majority of them have a simple, three-part plot featuring an emotional journey and a McGuffin. In the first part of the plot, our characters are downcast, somewhere between miserable and just unbearably bored. In the second part of the plot, our characters are introduced to the McGuffin, which they find fascinating. They are consumed with interest in it, with desire for it. This is the turning point. In the third part of the plot, our characters possess the McGuffin, and they have been cured of their misery or boredom. It has been replaced with liveliness, happiness, excitment.
In case you haven't figured it out, I'm describing television advertisements targeting young children. They are incredibly simple and formulaic. That is not an accident. Advertising aimed at children isn't really salesmanship. It's training. As a society, we train our children to solve their imperfect lives by engaging in consumerism. We indoctrinate them with a belief that if they are not presently happy, finding something they want to buy and buying it can make them happy.
And does it work? Oh boy, howdy! Have you been to a shopping mall?
Heck, even if you don't consciously believe that consumerism will make you happy, you very likely behave as though you do. Almost everyone identifies items that they want, becomes excited about buying them, buys them, and then lives out the remainder of life in the same emotional equilibrium as before the purchase. I do it, and I'm the guy telling you how ridiculous it is! But then I look around me, and I can remember a time before I owned each of the five objects closest to me. I was no unhappier in that time. Try it. Were you?
Occasionally, a purchase really does improve a person's life. Purchases related to a passionately-held hobby can certainly be money well spent. However, even some of these are irrelevant to our emotional well-being. Avid sports fans often get excited about buying better television to watch sports on. For a while, this television will be new and remarkable. Soon, sports fans return to normal, and they will be exactly as happy or as unhappy as they would have been watching a game with the same results on the old TV. If the new TV breaks, and the old one happens to have been sitting in the garage, complaints about the relative quality of the old TV will disappear within a couple of weeks. It is being able to watch the desired games that makes a difference, not the television.
Worthwhile purchases are the ones that allow us to pursue our passions more often or more thoroughly. These are surprisingly few and far between, to the degree that there are almost none that are universal. A bed that allows us to rest well might be the only one. Purchases that increase convenience would seem good candidates in theory, but in practice, they tend to save too little time to make a difference, or to open up time that we fill with more dissatisfying obligations rather than hobbies. If you feel desperate to buy something you can barely afford, or make a purchase that is otherwise inconvenient, carefully consider the things you already own. Are any one of them, or the set as a whole, preventing you from pursuing your passions as thoroughly as you like? Take a while to think about it thoroughly before you decide on a final answer. If the answer is still yes, a purchase may be the way to go. If not, try to circumvent your training by focusing more on what you do, not what you have.
You might be surprised by the results.
