Debra Efroymson
Dhaka, 2011
Wherever I look I seem to be assaulted by advertising for luxurious items: luxury housing, luxury cars, luxurious dining and vacations. Magazines offer articles about the places where the richest go to relax and play; stores and websites suggest high-end goods to satisfy my craving for the best.
One ad too many, and I can't help but wonder why we are expected to consider luxury desirable. Why should we want "the best," in other words, the most expensive? I realize it is easy to romanticize the past, but was there not a time when most of us simply wanted comfort and rather ordinary pleasures? When millionaires were regarded not only with envy but also with some dislike and suspicion: What did he do to gain so much?
Somewhere along the line, it seems, comfort became insufficient and we were taught instead to wish for luxury. So much so, that it seems odd to question whether luxury is in fact desirable, or simply a way of conning outrageous amounts of money out of people for unnecessary and overpriced products and services.
But question it I must. Is luxury really as desirable as it is presented? And who actually benefits from selling it to us? Certainly luxury can be pleasurable: it can mean mouth watering delicacies, beautiful settings, and some marvellous experiences. But one can have those without all the expense. Few things taste better than a home-baked loaf of bread fresh from the oven, or delectable fruit fresh from a tree, or...[insert your personal favourite here]. Beauty is all around us, and it is hard to beat nature for truly breathtaking scenes and inspiring landscapes. As for great experiences, they are likely to have little to do with spending money, and more to do with family and friends: a birth, a wonderful friendship, a childhood adventure....
Another side of luxury and elegance is all the etiquette involved. There is a dress code and there are strict rules of conduct, all of which could be described as stiff and constraining. Contrast those with the fun of a picnic or other gathering where you wear comfortable clothes, put your elbows on the table, eat with your fingers, and children are welcomed.
Then there is the matter of acquired taste. At one level I understand it; if you are, for instance, used to eating processed and junk food, then you will have to acquire a taste for healthy food--and once you do you will not want to go back. But why acquire a taste for expensive products that are not even pleasurable initially (or am I alone in not liking caviar or expensive champagne?), when you can instead please yourself with affordable food? Is having sophisticated tastes really something to be proud of, or should we rather feel good about our ability to adapt to various circumstances, which also opens up a whole range of possibilities such as going camping? Could we be proud, not of the luxury we indulge in, but rather of not wasting our pay check on "exclusive" items when there are far better uses for our money?
Images of extravagance have always seduced us. But during Ronald Reagan's presidency, two big things happened. Reagan convinced the American public that we were fully entitled to all the money we earn and that the poor are that way due to their own faults and so it is useless to try to help them. Simultaneously, being a millionaire (or even, as their numbers rose, a billionaire) lost any veneer of ugliness and deceit and became instead something desirable, a state we would all like to achieve. And Americans continue to be manipulated on that front: Don't "punish"(ie, tax) the rich, as someday you may be rich yourself!
So we are treated to images of the pleasures that go with fabulous wealth, not only on TV shows like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," but in movies, magazines, on TV and elsewhere. Take, for instance, the movie Bucket List, in which we are purportedly treated to a heart-warming story about the importance of human connections. In it, Jack Nicholson learns how hollow are his corporate billions without family. But it is hard not to notice how much he and Morgan Freeman enjoy spending great sums of money...so that the true underlying message of the movie would appear to be, try to enjoy unspeakable wealth at least briefly before you kick the bucket. That is, we are told that what is truly important is people; what we are shown (and we know which is more convincing) is that nothing in life is more enjoyable than vast wealth.
Simply craving luxury would not be such a problem if it were not for the far from insignificant consequences. Images of luxury encourage the belief that selfishness and self-indulgence are virtues rather than vices. They encourage people to embrace capitalism and cut-throat competition in its current exorbitantly inequitable form because it offers the hope, however illusory, of some day attaining great wealth. (Never mind the daily realities of health-cost-related bankruptcies, home foreclosures, ever-increasing debt, unemployment and so on). And such images teach people to envy and seek to emulate the rich, rather than resent them, and thus to agree to having the rich taxed at absurdly low rates.
The ways the middle class benefits from buying in to the myth that unlimited capitalism and the "free" market are a great economic system is by gaining access to some products and services that, of course, people must purchase to enjoy. The car, computer, mobile phone, McMansion, dinners out, fancy clothes, expensive trips...they have their pleasant sides but also mean significant debt for most. Do consumers really get their money's worth, or is this another con game on the part of the corporations who sell us--not just directly via advertising but via every form of media--the idea that our highest aspirations in life should not be to serve others, nor to be a positive presence on the planet, but rather to earn and spend as much as possible, to live a life of endless greed and self-indulgence? So we are taught, rather than to work for a more equal society, to attempt instead to emulate the wealthiest.
The author enjoying true luxury in her offce
What if, in our daily vocabulary, we either rejected the attractiveness of luxury entirely (who wants luxury when you can have comfort and friendliness?) or changed the definition, referring instead to the luxury of a home-cooked meal, of a lazy Saturday morning, of an evening curled up with a book, of a good time visiting friends? What if we referred to the purchase of expensive items as the fool easily parting from his money?
The redefinition of luxury could include the luxury to take more European-style holidays (six weeks or so a year instead of two), the luxury to work a shorter work week (36 hours, à la France), and the luxury to receive good quality health care and education provided by government, rather than having to pay for it ourselves. There is the luxury of not worrying about potential catastrophic illness, the luxury of not being greatly in debt, the luxury of not having to own a car because conditions for walking, cycling, and public transport are so good. There is, moreover, the luxury of feeling fully human in the knowledge that nobody must attempt to survive in sub-human conditions when wealth is distributed more evenly.
If we rejected the projections of pleasure associated with great wealth, might we be more eager to work towards creating a more just world? The freedom and motivation to pursue that particular dream could be the greatest luxury of all.
