Consumption

In the 1800s, “Consumption” was the common name for tuberculosis, a widespread and deadly disease with the notable symptom of coughing up blood. In the modern era, “consumption” is a common name for what Americans do for fun. We consume food, media, and various products, all of it in excess, and much of it not very good for us. We snack on industrial waste, stare at screens depicting other people’s suffering with near-addictive fascination, and accumulate brightly colored but poorly made plastic items in staggering quantities.

Most Americans also work ridiculously hard, because the Puritan work ethic has driven work culture since the first white people stood on American dirt. Work is not just something people do to earn a living. It has been blown up into an all-consuming moral imperative that defines our very identities.

Our American form of late-stage capitalist dystopia is a predictable result of centuries of destructive cultural assumptions. It is assumed that everyone must work. It is assumed that working is noble and moral, and that rest, relaxation, or inability to work is lazy and shameful. We tie health care to employment, so people who are unable to work due to injury, illness or disability are also less able to access medical treatment. And we keep score with money, to the point where money itself has come to possess a moral value. People with more money are held in higher esteem, assumed to be more worthy than those with less.  And ironically, many of the people who have the most money in America in 2026 do very little work! A few phone calls, an occasional keystroke, and the economic engine of America pours money into their investment accounts while those without such advantages work two and three jobs just to keep food on the table. And yet American culture tells us that “poor people are lazy.”

Money is how we keep score, along with the things that money buys. So we become consumed with consumption as soon as we have a bit of money to spare. We love trinkets, “collecting the entire set,” shiny things and designer labels. We are “conspicuous consumers,” buying things for the dopamine hit that comes with tapping the credit card and taking our bag of treats. There are children’s toys whose entire entertainment value appears to be the “unboxing” — with “blind bags” and posters showing which tiny plastic choking hazards remain as yet undiscovered. Having lots of things, and showing them off to each other, is such an all-consuming (pun intended) pastime that it has spawned an entire reactionary philosophy of “minimalism” (which, by the way, has also been marketed and monetized to be at least as costly as any other form of consumption).

This all seems terribly destructive. What if, instead, we tried on a different set of cultural beliefs that could serve us better?

Try on these assumptions: that you, dear reader, are entirely enough, exactly as you are in this moment. That your worth as a person is not measured by your productivity. That your BEING matters more than your DOING. That loving, and being loved, matters more than stuff. That you are beautiful no matter how you decorate yourself, and that your beauty is not measured by the labels on your clothes or the brand of makeup you use. That there is enough of everything for everyone — food, housing, clothing, health care, education — and the only reasons everyone can’t have those things are the greed of billionaires and a lack of political will. That having more money will not make you happier, and that having less money does not make you less of a person than someone who has more.

That consumption, now as in the 1800s, is fatal if left untreated.