Consuming and Identity

So, I've finally finish Technics and Civilization, which I have failed to properly review here.  it's a dense, thought-provoking philosophical work by Lewis Mumford addressing the relationship of our society to the machine that, despite being written in the 1930s, still feels timely.  Partly because his thoughts were largely ignored by the movers and shakers of the world, so the problems he addresses have either continued in increased in the meantime.  I really which I could have done a better job than my goodreads review, but this is all I got at the moment.  I hope I can come back to it later for another read-through, because I think it's a work that merits a deeper treatment than I've given it here.

But in writing down some of the things I liked about it, I remembered one of my favorite parts.  Towards the end of the book he's listing things we need to change to put our society on a course more centered towards human happiness (for ALL humans) and steer it back from a societal over-emphases on machines and mechanistic thinking.  He seems to have very little use for the kind of consumerism where consumption is a substitute for personality and this was an idea I have never fully entertained before.  Consuming as identity and personality.

This is the idea the ad companies have been selling for at least 100 years right?  You're not a nobody, you're a Lexus driver.  You're not a wallflower, you wear the latest fashions at the gap.  Consumption as a substitute for personality.  At times I am maddened by the world and it this, exactly this, that drives me batty.  The substitution of consumer goods for a personality.  What do I need to know about you except that you listen to the right music, wear the right clothes, watch the right movies, eat at the right places, etc.?  

It's I think at the core of a lot of my complaints with geek culture especially.  I love geek things, I love nerdy imaginative things, but I could give a shit if you've played the latest releases are wearing the all the franchise merchandise, have all the right collectibles, etc.  Those things are not what make you you.  Those things aren't what make you (or me!) worth talking to.  They're just some crap anyone can buy.  I don't care.  Why do we care?

Maybe the kind of culture we get cobbled together from people who form identities based on consumer purchases and surround themselves with people who purchase the same things, more or less, so they can justify their own consumption isn't the strongest web of human inter-connection we can form.  Like maybe, right?

I know I get preachy about this shit, but the dominance of brands in our cultural landscape is just very frustrating to me.  It leaves so little room for meaningful ideas and meaningful people.  "Purchasers of the right things." is like the least interesting of all the possible people we can be.  I just wish we heard that more often instead of the opposite.