The Lure of the Marketplace

“We like to think we behave rationally and that our actions are  governed by a sober evaluation of  consequences, but this idea ignores ample evidence that most of what we do is either habitual or the product of underlying motivations, emotions, impulses, and biases that constitute Freud’s “unconscious mind.” No better example exists than our buying behavior, in which we are routinely manipulated by sophisticated forms of marketing that appeal to our unfulfilled longings to be someone other than who we are: richer, younger, thinner, and with more hair, fewer wrinkles, and more friends..”

         The above quote reminds me of a statement the Greek philosopher Socrates is said to have uttered: “I like to go to the marketplace to see how many things I can do without!” Being a person who valued the life of the spirit, Socrates, unlike many of us, was able to resist the lure of materiality, and to be content with what little he had. But the point that psychiatrist and author Gordon Livingston is making does not have to do with resisting the accumulation of material possessions. His concern is with what motivates our buying and other habits, the spiritual void that we unconsciously attempt to fill with things, personal relationships, professional achievements, and exhilarating experiences. There is nothing inherently bad about any of this, and much that is good, but when we enter the marketplace of life not in order to encounter its various offerings, but in order not to encounter the emptiness within ourselves, it is problematic.

       So much of what drives our decisions has its genesis not in conscious choices and decisions, but in the inability to be content with our less than perfect selves. The agitation that results from this inner-discontent makes us susceptible to what appears to offer satisfaction, but can do so only temporarily, for nothing tangible can bring us the spiritual contentment that is our deepest longing.

       The invitation in all of this is to resist the impulse to flee from our restlessness, and to learn instead to patiently accept the likes of emptiness, loneliness, and guilt, as aspects of the human condition, and at times of our own condition. To do otherwise, to give power to discontent, can result in the failure to realize that although imperfect, flawed, and broken in many ways, we’re pretty damn good!