Does Romanticism Lead to Consumerism?
My argument, here, borrows from the theory of Jean Baudrillard:
Romanticism emphasizes the supremacy of the individual’s internal world (“interiority”) over both nature and society. The romantic “I” is expansive, but also solipsistic. Think of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” On the one hand, it contains multitudes, on the other hand, there’s a megalomania to a self that identifies with everything and leaves no room for “the Other.”
19th century Romanticism leads to 20th existentialism, which enshrines the “I” as the sole source of value, meaning, morality, and truth.
But the problem is that because we are social creatures, we can’t all live in our own internal worlds. Something has to bind us together. Yet as each individual withdraws from society to discover an inner truth and to pursue what s/he loves, the power of shared stories, shared facts, and shared values diminishes.
What takes the place of tradition when individualism fragments everyone into their own echo chamber of one? We tried hard totalitarianism and that didn’t work. So now, Baudrillard says, we’ve placed our collective bets on “mass media” and “consumerism.” What we have in common is what we buy, watch, and, in turn, broadcast. Our purchases serve to signal our tastes to the social world. Paradoxically, and somewhat tragically, we express our individuality, our supposed “inner truth,” by and large, by cultivating a public image, a brand, a set of affiliations.
Perhaps there is nothing new to this. Thorstein Veblen grasped that conspicuous consumption is a fundamental anthropological truth. And yet, modernity seems to exacerbate this. Perhaps because our identities are so much thinner than those of our ancestors—we compensate by trying to “wear” our identities conspicuously, as if trying to prove something. The fact that we do so indicates how different “identity” is today from what it would have meant—if it meant anything—to our ancestors.
I am not against consumerism, per se. But I do find it sad that the great promise of the original genius in the 19th century has led to a world in which we express this genius by taking Instagram selfies. If that’s genius, if that’s authenticity, count me out. Then again, don't be too quick to believe me—perhaps this newsletter is just a high octane version of the same?
P.S.—In case you missed it, check out yesterday’s post on Liberalism and Negative Theology.
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