Fashion – A World Of Pseudo-Satisfactions That Is Superficially Exciting But Hollow At Its Core
Everywhere we look we see signs of immense accumulation of commodities and objects and manufactured desires. Things and messages marketing things are saturating every part of our culture and shaping every aspect of our everyday lives. In many ways, we are not defined by what we do but by what we own. And we can always count on humanity’s desire for more. We buy things and for a short time we get a feeling of happiness, but nothing ever quite does it for us. Soon after we are on our search for the next thing that will give us the short-term satisfaction and so we go on living, searching for the next thing that will makes us just a little happier, but the question is where does this insatiable desire lead us?
It is important to stress that economic stability does contribute to the psychological well-being of people in general, having the basic needs met and feeling secure does add value to life. Even the experiences that we ‘consume’ contribute to our lasting happiness because they are as the word itself says experienced and subjective and therefore we get something out of those, unlike when we buy things. But the culture we are living in today is telling us through social media, movies, books what our lives should look like, and we just fall into the trap of wanting everything they show us. And of course, all this consuming is a result of stuff being cheap and available. In a world where everything is available we want everything. I would think that the best example of this ‘consumerist era’ is fashion.
What is fashion? – clothes that are perfectly usable become unusable and thrown into trash because someone who wants to make MORE money decides that they are out of fashion. And us the common folk, we want to feel good about ourselves and we go running to buy the next ‘trendy thing’. Not to mention that nowadays everything has become and object of fashion.
Personally, I can’t be a hypocrite, talk negatively of consumerism and love the stuff that I own and continue to buy other stuff. But I recognize that there is a problem. I think that we can’t go on trying to fill some void inside of us by consuming stuff. I think that it has to be clear to us all that we can’t buy our way to happiness because there will always be that need for more. I think it’s pretty clear that the answer to meaning and happiness is not in the things we buy.
