Spent

Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behaviour
Geoffrey Miller

A Literature Review



Geoffrey Miller takes a stab at looking at consumerist capitalism through an evolutionary psychologist’s lens and the reasons behind why we buy to advertise our biological potential.

He talks about previous attempts:

The Wrong Conservative Model (to “naturalize” – Darwinists, globalization advocates…):
Human nature + free markets = consumerist capitalism

The Wrong Radical Model (“bio-skeptics” of Marxists, anarchists, utopians, sociologists, postmodernists…):
The blank slate + oppressive institutions + invidious ideologies = consumer capitalism

And his:

The Sensible Model
Human instincts for trying unconsciously to display certain desirable personal traits + current social norms for displaying those mental traits through certain kinds of credentials, jobs, goods, and service + current technological abilities and constraints + certain social institutions and ideologies + historical accident and cultural inertia = early 21st century consumerist capitalism (9)

Arguing that the heart of modern day consumerism is not “materialistic”, but “semiotic” It is only about the psychological world of signs, symbols, images, brands, and not the actually realities of tangible products (11). And that we are all animals, and we possess “fitness indicators” even when we are not consciously aware why these traits evolved. And by understanding the biological realities, then maybe as a society, we can come to a higher, closer, common ground between those that are pro-consumerism and those that are against it (17). Miller explicitly keeps hammering the point home that the market “holds a mirror up to our desires, creating public manifestations of our private preferences” (19) and that it is much more convoluted than the “Hierarchy of needs” set out by Abraham Maslow in the 1950s. They are often not fulfilled one step at a time.

And this faith in products is the main crux of the issue:
“It promotes a narcissistic pseudospiritualism based on subjective pleasure, social status, romance, and lifestyle, as a product’s mental associations become more important than its actual physical qualities.” (43)

The two faces of consumerist narcissism are (a) public status seeking and (b) private pleasure seeking. Miller has many entertaining lists he creates based pretty much on his own preferences and thoughts, that his breaking down of what brands signal what notions. His “Narcissism Premium for Cost-Dense Products” table is semi-insightful, but strangely obvious at the same time. He calls it “economics meets physics” but basically what it shows is how many dollars per pound a variety of different products cost, from air, tap water, and rice to perfumes, luxury watches, private jet, botox injections, diamonds, and a human egg from a donor. First of all, the cost-densities are spread all over the map – with tap water at $0.0000633 US retail per pound net weight to the human egg at $4.5 trillion US retail per pound net weight. Then there are also thresholds of pricing that split the products from basic comforts of modern life to those that are designed mainly for flaunting or faking “fitness” because actually, “living doesn’t cost much, but showing off does.” (63) And all these notions about flaunting fitness, branding, and signalling theory (90) are great. But then Miller goes on to explain, in far too much detail, the “Central Six Traits” that he finds are absolutely essential in understanding why we choose the goods and services we do. It is not only trivial and auxiliary to my thesis, but it is inconclusive by any standards, and begins a very misleading tone for the rest of the book.

I would say it was a good overview in general, but quite reductionist. There might have been aspirations to be referred to as a pop-culture phenomenon in thinking about consumerist narcissism, but what is said is often too simple and too obvious. Some of Miller’s proposed solutions are quite awful, and self-evident money-saving tips, for example, how counterfeits reveal the real “con” in the so called “authentic” product. Or his logical extremes that lack actual common sense in his Porsche example of not fulfilling it’s cost-benefits of attracting an actual mate, versus saving that money and hiring a prostitute. There is also repeated disdain for marketing professionals not tapping into basic biological needs and wants, an almost personal rant. Not to mention his idea of tattoos of measured “Central Six Traits” on everyone’s head, the most frightening idea, not actually suggested in jest. I suspect that he meant to provoke rather than actually prove anything. But after digesting it all, the angle I wanted out of this book for my thesis is very narrow. I now know that I do not want to venture into this zone of evolutionary psychology to explain luxury and why we crave it. From a design point of view, it makes us tick inside, because senseless beauty is never actually senseless.