Consumption: The Behaviorist's Perspective

Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day. These cherished holidays give us a chance to renew vows of love, to celebrate Christ’s resurrection (or, for us pagans, the return of spring), to honor our mothers, to show a little gratitude for our brothers and sisters in the armed forces. Mostly, though, these holidays give us a chance to spend money.

I try to resist the impulse to blather on about consumption—about the insatiable beast into whose maw we pour all of our natural resources, including our own working lives—and out of whose ass come glittering new things, things we continue to hold more dear than the air we breathe and the water we drink. Because, you know, who wants to hear it?

Plus, it’s a losing battle. We can’t help ourselves. There’s something about spending money, about buying things, that satisfies us deeply—more deeply than, say, eliminating poverty or protecting endangered birds. Why?

Let’s take women first. There are roughly 3.5 billion women in the world, and all of them like to shop. I’m not saying just that they shop—everybody shops—but women enjoy it. Women spree. But take a look at what comes home in those pretty bags and boxes: clothes, including and especially shoes, jewelry and related adornments, beauty enhancements like soaps, lotions, and scents, not to mention the package herself—manicured and pedicured, waxed and buffed. It is an incontrovertible law of nature: The woman wants to be desired; therefore, she shops.

The wise man bows to this truth and, like me, will hold his tongue even when the woman complains about the chore of “reorganizing” her closet. The wise man knows that the female waxwing likes to spruce up her nest, maybe even weave a piece of found ribbon among the twigs, and he knows why. The wise man has learned to caress the linens and silks appreciatively, to nod over the new fragrance like a connoisseur, to grin happily at the $300 color job. It’s all for him anyway—or might be. 

Now, how about us men—wise or otherwise. Men are different; it’s categorical that they don’t get excited about the prospect of a day of shopping with the guyfriend. Sometimes out of necessity they do go shopping with their wives, but these excursions, for most men, can be endured only with the help of a nice, fat Percocet. Here’s the thing, though: When men do shop, they go big. Cars, boats, beach houses, Rolex watches, vintage Martin guitars, a new bag of Titleist golf clubs. Why? For exactly the same reason women shop: To make their existence known to members of the opposite sex—not excluding their wives and not necessarily younger women, but women, dammit. In the case of golf clubs and vintage guitars, such items are of course penis extenders intended to intimidate and oppress other males, which comes to the same thing.   

The monogamous relationship is on solid ground when the two partners go big together: first-class airline tickets for that week in Paris, August in Bar Harbor, the long deferred dream of the complete kitchen do-over.

Wait. What’s happening? Am I, your erstwhile advocate for the health and longevity of Planet Earth, seriously countenancing consumption on a colossal scale?

No, not exactly. I’m just saying that birds do it and bees do it and Father’s Day is right around the corner.

In Defense of Sorriness

The arrival of the Great American Backyard Bird Count a few weeks back prompted a once-a-decade bird-feeder cleaning. I have a couple of the dome-over-dish type, and since I look down from my loft-office window, I figured I could count better if I could see through those weather-stained, mold-splotched domes. Should I do the cylindrical one, too, while I was at it? No. Obvi. Foul as it might have been, the cylinder had no apparatus to block my view. To borrow one of my dear departed father’s favorite expressions, I wasn’t going to make it my life’s work.

            I hauled ‘em in to the kitchen sink (Dede not at home), soaped ‘em, scrubbed ‘em, and rinsed ‘em down. Problem: when the domes dried they were just as opaque as they had been, though not quite as nasty. I took ‘em outside and went at ‘em with a spray cleanser. Made no difference. Hadn’t I had better luck last time I tried this? Hadn’t I been able to completely restore their acrylic transparency? What had I used? Since I couldn’t remember the answers to the first two questions, the third one was moot. I hung the feeders back up, having at least imparted a measure of hygiene. I had also succeeded in not making it my life’s work.

            A path opens before me down always-entertaining memory-loss lane, but today I have a greater theme in mind: sorriness.

            I’m not claiming to be the sorriest person in the world. I’m willing to bet that at least a few house painters are sorrier than me. Maybe a few jackleg auto mechanics. But I’m sorry enough.

            I deceived myself on this point for the longest time. Wasn’t I a go-getter, full of grand ambitions, a leader of men? Hadn’t I been elected president of my ninth-grade class? I was rounding the bend past sixty when it hit me that that was actually my mother’s conception of me and that it probably wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. Dead thirty years. Mom, let it go. It’s too late for me to be a Supreme Court justice.

            Now I see the truth. Now I look in the mirror and I see sorriness. What’s more, with these new eyes I can see a proclivity toward sorriness from an early age. One night in tenth grade (the huge election victory a year earlier notwithstanding), instead of reading the history assignment I hula-hooped 5,000 times, a perfectly pointless endeavor encouraged by my dear, long-gone, equally sorry brother. The go-getters pretended not to study and made the Dean’s List. I didn’t study and made Cs.

            But is that such a bad thing? My father would think so. When he said, “Don’t make it your life’s work,” you were supposed to understand that the injunction applied to putting gas in the lawn mower, say, rather than to, say, everything. He went to the office every day until he was eighty, a classic type-A. Which is fine, of course. But one of those in a family is probably enough.

            The way I see it, sorriness is a gentle, unassuming vice, one that doesn’t insist on dominating the personality. It’s a vice that leaves room for virtue. For example, sorry people almost never run for high office, direct global corporations, or incite religious fervor. The small force sorriness exerts does nothing but create an almost inaudible ping in the machinery of capitalist consumerism. Sorry people know how to say “no.”
            Sure, I wake up some mornings and think, “Gee, maybe I should do something today.” Because, in this culture, how could sorriness not be vulnerable to self-reproach?

            But we sorry people—those of us who are serious about it—will remain true to ourselves and strong in our aversions. Nobody is the boss of us.   

Code Red in the War on Decent Folk

We couldn’t put it off any longer. Last night Dede and I told Ruthie we were getting a divorce. Since we’ve enjoyed what can only be termed a highly successful marriage for 37 years, the news was unexpected.

            “You’re what?”

            “We’re getting out,” I offered, not very helpfully. “It’s time. We really don’t have any choice.”

            “What are you talking about? You all are perfect together.”

            “That’s not the point,” Dede tried to explain.

            “What is the point?” Ruthie cried.

            I put it as succinctly as I could. “Gay marriage.”

            “What?”

            “They’ve been warning us for years, darling, but we never listened. Gay marriage threatens traditional marriage. We were so doggone happy we weren’t paying attention, and now it’s here. It’s everywhere. It’s on our doorstep. We’re under assault.”

            Dede chimed in. “Our state legislature has been doing its best to protect us. But they won’t be able to hold out much longer. Have you been reading about Texas? They have a good solid ban against gay marriage, and then some district judge—a Democrat, wouldn’t you know—comes along and issues a marriage license to a couple of lesbians.”

            “Our legislature did its job by amending our Constitution ten years ago," I added, "and our Supreme Court—bless its heart—is trying its best to uphold the ban, but these damn gay people keep popping up like mushrooms after a warm rain. Which is fine, of course, until they try to take the place of us rightfully married folks.”

            “We can’t keep our heads buried in the sand any longer,” said Dede. “We’ve got to cut and run before it’s too late.”

            “Too late for what?” Ruthie pleaded. We knew all this would be hard for her to understand. Thirty-year-olds think they know everything.

            “Don’t you see, sweetie? They’ll either kick us off the island or we’ll have to convert.”

            “That’s just crazy talk.”

            I thought an analogy might help. “It’s just like what’s happening to our religious liberty.”

            “Daddy!” Ruthie fairly screamed. “You haven’t been to church in 50 years!”

            “The point is”—I was getting a little exasperated myself—“I couldn’t even if I wanted to. The pastor would make me start taking free, government-issued contraceptives.”

            At this point Ruthie threw her hands up. “So what else threatens civilization as we know it?”

            Somebody had to say it, so Dede did. “Immigration. The Mexicans want to bring in their drugs and take our jobs.”

            I help up my hand before Ruthie could point out that neither Dede nor I had had jobs for quite some time. “The thing is, the world is changing, and your mother and I happen to think that it was just fine the way it was.”

            Ruthie shrugged sadly. “Isn’t there anything I can do?”

            I knew she meant anything to help her poor old mom and dad, but I chose to put her question in a larger context.

            “Just keep voting Republican,” I told her. “It’s all any of us can do.”

It's OK. The Kids Have Got It.

I’m talking about the ones I know, like daughter Ruth, son-in-law Ben, their circle of friends, and a handful of nieces and nephews, who are all 30 or thereabouts and, I suppose, officially grown-ups, but, in any case, they flabbergast me.

Ben, a cellist, teaches music in a charter school, gives private lessons, takes classes at Georgia State for his official K-12 teaching certificate, and performs several nights a week with a number of different alt-rock-jazz bands. A pack mule would collapse after half a day under his burden.

Ruthie, as I write, is giving a “job talk” at a distinguished university. Tomorrow she gives a lecture, and around those two highlight events is a packed schedule of meals and meetings with important names and faces. This is the two-day culmination of a process that began with the standard (book-length) written application and proceeded to a Skype interview. I’m sure she’s delighted to be among the final candidates to have made it this far, but, jeez, a job talk? Apparently she has 40 minutes to elucidate her scholarly interests and ambitions, her teaching experience and philosophy, and her credentials as a servant to the greater good, and then demonstrate how perfectly these qualifications mesh with the academic department’s current needs and goals as well as with the university’s idealized vision of itself. Of course this “talk” is delivered to a number of exalted excellencies, none of whom she knew before her arrival on campus.

When Dede applied for her job in the English Department of Kennesaw College (now KSU) 30-odd years ago, she had an interview with an assistant dean who glanced over the application she had sent in and said, “Well, this all looks fine, hon. Just pick up your fall teaching schedule from your department secretary and we’re good to go.” Or something like that.

The one get-dressed-and-go-to-the-office job I ever had required no application, no interview. I got a phone call with the job offer. True, the person offering me the job knew me personally, knew of my at-that-moment desperate circumstances, and realized, shrewdly, that in my mind the real-job-sounding title “associate editor” would outweigh a pay package that had INTERN stamped all over it. I was 40, by the way.

I needed the job because a long-running freelance gig (writing up market research reports from transcribed focus group interviews—I swear) had at last played itself out. I got the call from my boss early one morning, Dede and I still at the breakfast table. The recent relocation to Miami had been expensive, business was stagnant, blah, blah, blah. Upshot: she needed to move the work I did in-house. We had become friends, so it wasn’t easy for her, but I was grinning like a kid on the Friday-afternoon school bus. There may be a job out there that you don’t eventually get sick of, but this wasn’t it. Dede had no idea what was making me so giddy, until I covered the mouthpiece and whispered rapturously, “Teresa is firing me!”

That was the good news. The bad news was that I was now—and seriously—on the job market. With, I might add, few prospects. All those mornings I spent hunched over the want ads, answering anything that made even the remotest reference to the word “writer.” I got zero, zilch, nada. A month. Several months. Then one day I was called to interview for a job as a “technical writer.” Okaaaay! Here I come, y’all, and I’m looking good! Did I first take a moment to acquaint myself with the duties and skills of a technical writer, or even the basic job description of same? No. My ignorance remained complete when I sat for the interview and was asked to elaborate on my credentials for the position. I replied—no doubt with a bit of a hitch in the old eyebrow—“Well, I mean, what is technical writing? After all, it’s writing, isn’t it?” Mercifully, the publishing company called not too long after that.

Oops. Sorry for the bumpy ride along my career path. Point is: the kids today are a lot smarter than I was. Which is a good thing. We wouldn’t want Ruthie beginning her job talk by saying, “Well, just what is an assistant professor?”

Women. Thank God.

Do I need me some inspiration as I face the new year? Heck yeah, and I’m getting it from a few good women.

Did you see Ursula Le Guin’s remarks as she accepted the Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 2014 National Book Awards the other week? The clip is on YouTube, but in the meantime, picture a small, silver-haired woman with a kind and deeply lined 85-year-old face lobbing a grenade into a roomful of tuxedoed publishing-industry bigwigs. Those people didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. I promise: it’ll be a long time before that much truth gets told inside of six minutes again.

“I think hard times are coming,” Le Guin said, “when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being.” Mostly, she said, “We will need writers who can remember freedom . . . who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art.” Not even her own publisher was spared; the industry had caved in, sold out, and now suffered under the lash of its corporate overlords, who, predictably, were stalking editorial offices. She challenged writers to be brave enough to resist and reminded them that “the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”

I also got some uplift the other day from the regal Jane Goodall, who at age 80 still travels the world on behalf of primates and the rest of the planet. She was in Atlanta to accept the 2014 Exemplar Award from the Captain Planet Foundation, the organization founded by Ted Turner and now run by his daughter Laura Turner Seydel.

            Goodall is worried about worldwide deforestation—and the two forces that drive it: poverty and its evil twin, consumption. “When you’re living in poverty, you’re going to cut down trees to grow food for your family,” she told the AJC’s Jennifer Brett. “You haven’t got much choice. You’re going to buy the cheapest goods and not care how they’re made. On the other hand is this materialistic, wasteful culture. If you have a date, you must have a new dress.”  Probably not a remark we care to ponder as we sort through the season’s new sweaters, shirts, and socks, but Goodall is one of the people keeping the big picture in focus.

            Then there’s good old Elizabeth Warren. You remember a few weeks ago when we were all so relieved that the $1.1 trillion budget bill passed. The House passed it. The Senate passed it. President Obama signed it. Yay! The government is working. It fell to Elizabeth Warren to point out that the government was working exactly like CitiGroup wanted it to—by passing a budget bill that included a provision to weaken the rules of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. The provision was pretty much written by Citi lobbyists—who clearly have balls of steel, since it wasn’t that long ago that Citi made off with $500 billion (yes, billion) in bailout money.

Senator Warren took the floor on December 12 to rail against the relentless accretion of power by this Wall Street behemoth: “And now we're watching as congress passes yet another provision that was written by lobbyists for the biggest recipient of bailout money in the history of this country. And it’s attached to a bill that needs to pass or else the entire federal government will grind to a halt. Think about that kind of power,” she said, “if a financial institution can become so big and so powerful that it can hold the entire country hostage.” Tell it, sister.

Needless to say, any survey of the women I’m counting on to help me get out of bed during the new year has got to include The One Who Matters—Dede, who for many years to come, I hope, will amuse me (even when some of her funniest lines are about somebody she calls “Peepaw,” whom I don’t believe I know); instruct me on an astounding number of subjects—do’s and don’t’s, let’s call them—about which I am often very fortunate to receive such instruction; and love me almost unconditionally (all bets are off if I forget one more time to turn down the thermostat before I come to bed).

2015. Bring it on.

Christmas Letter to an Old Friend

Bob!

            Wow, it was great to get your card, man. Years been slipping by, right?

            Anyhooby, we’re all good here. Ruthie pulled a twofer this summer—finished school and married Ben, pretty much on the same day. You’ll be happy to hear that Ben has accepted the responsibility of keeping music at the center of our little family. What about Jakob? Looked like the Wallflowers’ reunion album did well. And touring with Clapton? Helloooo. Of course, none of that changes the fact that you have a child who’s 45 years old.

            So I was just recently watching that YouTube video of “Forever Young” and you know how it has that clip of you meeting the Pope? I get such a kick out of that. Just wish my parents could’ve been around to see it. “I can’t believe you listen to that whining.” Lordy. How many of us kids had to hear their parents utter that galling pronouncement. Well, they’re all gone, and here you are, still rocking the free world, and while you’re at it, meeting popes and presidents and collecting all manner of medals and shit. Thank you. Our vindication has been complete.

            But it was never really about the fame and fanciness, was it, Bob? At least not entirely, right? I don’t want to get all sentimental on you, but you were singing songs in the ‘60s that made a difference in how a generation—my generation—saw the world. Still sees the world.

            Remember “Oxford Town”?

                        Oxford town just about noon

                        Everybody singing a sad tune

                        Two men died ‘neath the Mississippi moon

                        Somebody better investigate soon

Nineteen sixty-three, Bob. You and Suze on the cover of Freewheelin’. I was in tenth grade, man. Did not know shit. Or off the same album, dropped in the middle of one of your funniest songs:

                        I was out there paintin’ on the old wood shed

                        When a can of black paint it fell on my head

                        I went down to scrub and rub

                        But I had to sit in back of the tub

            Then, just a year later, “Only a Pawn in Their Game”? Bob, that was deep. I don’t think there were a whole lot of people looking at Medgar Evers’ murder in just that way. (I’m tempted to observe that the song is even more relevant today, but (a) you know that and (b) no need to get started.)

            And with Kennedy deciding keep the dominoes from falling in Southeast Asia, here you came with beauts like “Masters of War” and “With God on Our Side.” Tell you what: if all those parents had ever actually listened, they really would’ve been horrified. But at the same time we got songs like the hilarious “Talkin’ World War III Blues,” with another one of your timeless—and increasingly unheeded—messages: People, stop taking yourselves, and me, so damn seriously.

            Okay, okay. I know I’m just embarrassing you. But it’s Christmas, Bob, and I’m in the mood to count blessings. Fifty years’ worth.

            Thanks again for the card. So great to hear from you. And next time you come through Atlanta, you better come out here and spend the night.

Cheers, John 

A Brief Treatise on Hating

Sure, it can be fun. Dede, for instance, is a terrific hater. Her favorite verb is “hate.” I hate winter. I hate the Falcons (not just this year). I hate this sink. I hate all the fiction in The New Yorker. But none of this hating amounts to anything. It’s just her vivacious way of expressing herself.

            My guess is that most of us take our hating a little more seriously, a little more warily. We’ve seen the power and the glory, you might say. I hated a guy I was in graduate school with. No reason. I just did. And I mean I really did. Hated his clothes, his hair, his voice, his face, his walk—maybe especially his walk, since our entire relationship consisted of occasionally passing one another in the hallway. I absolutely loved hating this guy. Why? The dark god was speaking to me, telling me how beautiful I was.

            I’ve probably failed to convey just how harrowing this experience was. But, then, who hasn’t been there? What we all have to learn is how to manage our hating.

            Me, for example—I’m trying to be careful about how much I hate the process of “logging in.” I hate it, certainly, just as I hate the words, “your account.” And it’s not just because I’m less than perfect at keeping track of my passwords. (Really, really hate passwords.) It’s because I don’t want to log in. I don’t want to have an account. I don’t want to come up with another goddamn password. I’m sixty-six years old, and I just want to do what I want to do without having to do a thousand other goddamn things first.

            But you see how I’m managing. This is rational, well-regulated, and justifiable hating. Just never assume that it’s over, that you’ve won. A thousand times a day I hear her sweet whisper: Throw it, John, throw it!  You don’t have to be a wienie-butt all your life. But that would be irrational, my better self reminds me, especially since I would have to drive straight to Staples and get a new one. It won’t happen. I’m good.

            We all have things we hate—airline travel, the Aflac duck, Atlanta traffic (still in the A’s, you notice). . . .  But let’s don’t hate ourselves for hating these things. This kind of hating is doable. Who doesn’t resent the tedium and indignity of the airport security line? Who hasn’t wanted to hurt people who have 40 things to put in the overhead bins? Who doesn’t despise the corporate thugs that designed the spine-killing seats and then crammed them on top of one another? Or felt the old blood pressure spike at having to breathe the toxic air circulating and recirculating throughout the cabin? The important thing to remember is that you are experiencing—and therefore releasing—these feelings in a safe environment: a pressurized cabin 35,000 feet above the ground.

            OK. Full disclosure. There’s one thing in my life I hate without control, and it’s probably destroying me. It’s an evil that affords such pleasure that all the rage and frustration I endure in its pursuit are suddenly forgotten. Then I realize that the rage and frustration are sniggering behind my back. It’s a siren that calls me to make the same mistakes, over and over again, day after day, week after week, year after year. When I do make these mistakes, she laughs at me and humiliates me in my anguish. The more I hate, of course, the more it holds me in thrall.

            Here’s what worries me: That when my last day is done, the author of my obituary will choose to overlook all of my remarkable achievements but will record instead for all posterity that “he loved ****.”

            Man. I'm really gonna hate that.