Confucius often said that if only a ruler could employ him, in one year he would achieve a lot, and in three years he would succeed. One day a disciple asked him, “If a king were to entrust you with a territory which you could govern according to your ideas, what would you do first?” Confucius replied, “My first task would certainly be to rectify the names.” On hearing this, the disciple was puzzled. “Rectify the names? And that would be your first priority? Is this a joke?” (Chesterton or Orwell, however, would have immediately understood and approved the idea.) Confucius had to explain: “If the names are not correct, if they do not match realities, language has no object. If language is without an object, action becomes impossible — and therefore all human affairs disintegrate and their management becomes pointless and impossible. Hence, the very first task of a true statesman is to rectify the names.”

That’s from Simon Leys’s introduction to his translation of the Analects, which also appears in a fine NYRB collection, The Hall of Uselessness.

Now, for a bit of rectification.

***

To consume something is to destroy it. Buildings are consumed by fire. Prey are consumed by predators. The English muffin with which I might begin the day does not survive my breakfast.

I have read Jane Austen’s Emma six or seven times. Not only have I not consumed it literally — I still have two or three books that contain the novel, and I hope that there’s at least one such on your shelves — but I haven’t consumed it figuratively, either. I look forward to reading it a few more times. I’m not done with Emma.

“Consumer society” is a phrase that first appeared around 1950. I’d like to know more about precisely what it meant at the time — what was felt to be new about it — but it clearly referred to a shift in attitude toward durable goods. Previously, durable goods were intended by buyer and seller alike to remain in reasonably good working order, with repairs as needed, for a period approximating the buyer’s lifetime. The consumer society rejected this notion. “Consumers” would replace such goods for reasons other than need. Durables would now be discarded while still in working order or without recourse to repair. Unless, as in the case of clothing and automobiles, goods could be cleaned or refreshed to a degree that erased the palpable traces of a previous user, they were to be junked.

At the same time, the marketplace was newly awash in patently ephemeral goods, toys for adults as well as for children, that were not designed to last for a very long time. Many were actually labeled “disposable.” Bic pens, for example, could not be refilled, which made them prematurely worthless: the ink was consumed, but the pen was not.

Both cases retained a meaningful connection to the idea of consumption, but they introduced an element that had nothing to do with it. This was the notion that the “consumer” would make use of a thing until his desire to use it was exhausted. For example, someone might be concerned with owning the “latest” model of an appliance. This intangible value, whatever it might be, did not inhere in the object, and could not be consumed. When a dishwasher, for example, ceased to be “the most quiet” of available dishwashers, nothing was consumed.

Let’s call this new element “novelty.”

At some point within the past twenty-five years, people began to speak of consuming things when in fact all that had occurred was the novelty of those things had worn off. Thus began the improbable era of immaterial consumption, a period to which I should like to put an end with this entry.

You do not “consume” news, even if you burn your newspaper after you’ve read it. You do not “consume” art by visiting museums. News stories live on indefinitely in archives, and the most important function of a museum is to prevent the consumption of the works in its collection, by fire, theft, or otherwise. News stories and artworks are catalysts: they induce changes in receptive minds, but they themselves remain unchanged. Minds that remain unchanged are ipso facto not receptive: nothing happens, certainly not “consumption.”

The evil of this usage lies in this: it not very surreptitiously posits a value in news stories and artworks that is determined by the frequency with which they are “consumed,” and, as if that were not bad enough, “consumption” is equated with both “exposure” and “exhaustion of interest.” Having consumed the Mona Lisa, you move on to The Girl With the Pearl Earring. Two items off the bucket list.

Don’t get me started on bucket lists! Just try not to be somebody else’s marketing tool. Consume as much junk as you like, but bear in mind that you cannot consume anything truly worthwhile, except of course by physically destroying it.

Daily Blague news item: Circenses

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Monday, January 27th, 2014 at 2:04 pm.