Ikea
is a Swedish company that has had incredible success worldwide. In an article in the online newsletter, the
Robin Report (Jan. 14, 2015), Warren Shoulberg discusses the secret of this
success. By creating affordable
furniture that is assembled by the customer, Ikea has made it permissible for
people to easily dispose of furniture should they have to move geographically,
should they move up economically or should their tastes change. The furniture is not meant to last
forever. A person no longer has to be
married to furniture that he can’t replace.
The same principle applies to the houses which Ikea produces. Again, the customer assembles the house himself.
Ikea
has acted as an inspiration for many stores in other kinds of merchandise like
clothing. Stores like H & M and Zara
create clothes that aren’t meant to be durable and that are relatively
inexpensive. It allows customers to
change their clothing look more often, and thus, supposedly, to be more
physically attractive.
For
many people, there is a preference to not even acquire books as things
anymore. It is much lighter to acquire a
book as an e-book and read it on your nook or kindle. Then you don’t have to worry about storing a
lot of books in your residence. For many
people, the old appreciation of books as valuable, well-made and even
decorative objects, sometimes with beautiful illustrations, has long since
disappeared.
This
does not mean that there are no longer many people who search for quality in
certain categories of products. In
previous articles, I have pointed out that many people accumulate products in
order to cling to some kind of tangible material things and, thus, to defend themselves
against the emptiness, the entropy found in the experiential vacuums of modern
technological living environments. But
this new twist in the accumulation of disposable products represents a new kind
of motivation for today’s consumers, and it is something that is definitely
worth exploring.
A
disposable product is one that lasts much less time than the traditional
product made for that particular product category. It falls apart or wears out more easily. As a phenomenon, it goes from being a highly
defined figure to one that is eaten away by the disintegrating influences of
entropy. It is a phenomenon that moves
in the direction of emptiness, of a vacuum.
So if
people have been accumulating figure products, to bundle them together as an
island to which they can cling while floating in the experiential vacuum of
modern technological living environments, why would they want to obtain figure
products that fall apart into a vacuum state, and that can’t provide a
long-term surrogate grounding for them?
This
leads to a discussion of what aspects of the accumulated figure products
provide people today with a sense of surrogate grounding. If it is not the solid durability of products
that protects against the emptiness and entropy of the experiential vacuum,
what does protect? First of all, as has
been previously noted, the accumulation of figure products is a very imperfect
protection, because even many figure products don’t create the sense of pull or
gravity that being anchored in a more traditional organic environment
does. So people desperately keep trying
to accumulate more and more figure products in the vain hope of creating the
kind of grounded connection found in a more natural living environment. And each time the addition of a new product fails
to provide the difference that allows a person to feel a long term grounding in
his collection of figure products, the person becomes numb to and disconnected
from his new possession. Furthermore,
there comes a point where a person’s residence runs out of room for new
products. The person gets swallowed up
by his large collection of figures rather than grounded in them.
But
the person doesn’t give up on trying to ground himself in his products, because
it is the only apparent option that remains for him. So the person continues to obtain products
that he can dispose of, because in truth his sensation of temporary grounding
lies in the acquisition of a new product rather than holding onto it for a long
period of time. It is the equivalent of
a kick or a temporary high that provides him with the sensation of the
grounding for which he is searching, before it disappears. And by having products that are disposable
and therefore cheaper, he can more easily get rid of them to provide space for
other new articles. It is like a drug
addiction where there is no true sustainable level of satisfaction.
In
truth, it is the active acquisition of figure products that seems to provide a
temporary sensation of grounding in our modern experiential vacuum, rather than
simply holding onto them, clinging to them.
It doesn’t matter whether the products are only going to last for a
short time, because the sensation of grounding obtained from them is also only
of short duration. It is the novel
aspect of the new possessions that leaves a new imprint on the person and
temporarily jolts him out of his sense of emptiness.
At
the same time, because there is a relatively rapid turnover within categories
of products, there are more and more transitions between products that provide
brief periods of experiential vacuums.
When the old sofa falls apart, it usually has to be taken out of the
house or apartment, before a new one is installed in its place. That is a physical vacuum moment. Sometimes the vacuum moment comes from simply
switching emotional attachment from the broken-down product to the new
one. Buying a new sweater to replace an
old worn-out sweater. The accumulation
of these numbness moments results in a growing need to fight them off with more
and more experiences of surrogate grounding through the accumulation of more
and more new products. Hence, there
develops an increasingly frantic and frenetic pattern of consumption.
In
the long run, this pattern of disposable products bleeds into our
relationships. When there are too many isolated phenomena floating around in
our field of experience, we blur them together to create an artificial mental
grounding. Different phenomena can blur
back and forth into each other. In this
case, disposable products like Ikea act as an implicit model for how we deal
with the people in our lives. More and
more people fall into having Ikea connections with people. In the area of romance, this means Ikea boyfriends
and girlfriends. And because there is
little grounding from organic environments that can act as a template for solid
durable relationships, the Ikea relationships don’t offer a sense of secure
grounding within them. People become
disconnected, bored and numb within the relationships and try to stimulate them
to life with the jolts of conflict.
Either the numbness or else the static from the conflicts or both leads
to the disposing of the relationships.
And as people develop an accumulated sense of numbness from the vacuum
spaces between the periods of the relationships, people can end up going
through more and more relationships more quickly to fight the numbness. So a supposedly solid commitment ends up
becoming one more disposable product.
The
application of Ikea purchases as a model for modern relationships fits well
with a previous explanation that was developed in this column for growing
sexual freedom today. I have discussed
how people today have many lovers at least partly as a substitute for the
sensory variety of natural living environments that is of course missing in
modern technological living environments.
One human body disconnected from the template of a natural living
environment may contribute to new physical sensation, but it doesn’t offer a
sense of secure grounding. So with each
new lover, a person gets more sensory variety in his life, but, at the same
time, a greater sense of the lack of meaningful grounding available in the
emotional commitment to one person.
We
need more durable furniture, more durable clothing and more durable
relationships, if we are going to maintain a durable organic human society. The rapid ongoing turnover of products and
people in our lives, even if it is an attempt to stimulate us to life, can
ultimately lead to the disintegration of human society. Ultimately, the durability of products and
people relationships in our external world helps to maintain the organic
cohesion of our senses of self in our inner world. When everything in our external world becomes
transient, we become transient within ourselves. We reinvent ourselves over and over to adjust
to the new circumstances resulting from the shifting Ikea phenomena in our
surroundings. We end up losing our core
sense of self.
On
the other hand, the gradual change created by evolving organic flowing
blendable continual stimuli is an important part of life that is necessary to
stimulate us to life and to provide new configurations of stimuli and new
experiential surfaces on which to leave new and different organic
imprints. Imprints that can give us
novel rich vibrant experiences and that can form the basis of our individual
surrogate immortalities and our collective group surrogate immortalities in
preparation for death. But this gradual
organic change has to be balanced out with a sense of continuity, a sense of
firm principles and material order that gives us fundamental conceptual figures
that we can focus on, fundamental conceptual figures planted firmly in
psychological grounding. Basil Davidson
in his book The African Genius (1969) talks about the importance of the
equilibrium between continuity and change among African tribes. We in modern technological society have lost
this equilibrium. Technological change
is occurring so rapidly. We are being
pummeled by the defined discrete stimuli from data and from disposable
products. The danger is that the loss of
continuity among the phenomena in our living environment will contribute to a
loss of psychological continuity in ourselves and a loss of social continuity
in our human groups and ultimately to our personal and collective
disintegration as organisms. And, of
course, with some of this disintegration already happening, it is no wonder
that some people are already embracing the organizing principles of cyborgs and
robots. We have to find some way to
bring back some of the aspects of natural living environments into our lives,
if we want to survive as humans.
(c) 2015 Laurence Mesirow
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