Critics of euthanasia sometimes claim that legalizing any form of the practice will lead to a slippery slope effect, resulting eventually in non-voluntary or even involuntary euthanasia. The slippery slope argument has been present in the euthanasia debate since at least the 1930s.
Lawyer Eugene Volokh argued in his article The Mechanism of the Slippery Slope that judicial logic could eventually lead to a gradual break in the legal restrictions for euthanasia, while medical oncologist and palliative care specialist Jan Bernheim
believes the law can provide safeguards against slippery-slope effects,
saying that the grievances of euthanasia opponents are unfounded.
The slippery slope
As applied to the euthanasia debate, the slippery slope argument claims that the acceptance of certain practices, such as physician-assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia, will invariably lead to the acceptance or practice of concepts which are currently deemed unacceptable, such as non-voluntary or involuntary euthanasia. Thus, it is argued, in order to prevent these undesirable practices from occurring, we need to resist taking the first step.
There are two basic forms which the argument may take, each of which involves different arguments for and against. The first of these, referred to as the logical version, argues that the acceptance of the initial act, A, logically entails the acceptance of B, where A is acceptable but B is an undesirable action. This version is further refined into two forms based on how A entails
B. In the first, it is argued that there "is no relevant conceptual
difference between A and B" – the premises that underlie the acceptance of A logically entail the
acceptance of B. Within the euthanasia debate, van der Burg identifies
one of Richard Sherlock's objections to Duff and Campbell as fitting
this model. Duff and Campbell had presented an argument for the selective
non-treatment of newborns suffering from serious defects. In responding
to Duff and Campbell's stance, Sherlock argued that the premises which
they employed in order to justify their position would be just as
effective, if not more so, in justifying the non-treatment of older
children: "In short, if there is any justification at all for what Duff
and Campbell propose for newborns then there is better justification for
a similar policy with respect to children at any age."
The second logical form of the slippery slope argument, referred to as the "arbitrary line" version, argues that the acceptance of A will lead to the acceptance of A1, as
A1 is not significantly different from A. A1 will then lead to A2, A2 to
A3, and eventually the process will lead to the unacceptable B. As Glover argues, this version of the argument does not say that there
is no significant difference between A and B, but instead argues that it
is impossible to justify accepting A while also denying B – drawing a
line at any point between the two would be creating an arbitrary cut-off
point that would be unjustifiable. Glover provides the example of infanticide (or non-voluntary euthanasia) and severely deformed children:
"If it is allowable at birth for
children with some grave abnormality, what will we say about an equally
grave abnormality that is only detectable at three months? And another
that is only detectable at six months? And another that is detectable at
birth only slightly less serious? And another that is slightly less
serious than that one?"
— Jonathan Glover
The second primary form of the slippery slope argument is that of the "Empirical" or "Psychological" argument. The empirical version does not rely on a logical connection between A
and B, but instead argues that an acceptance of A will, in time, lead to
an acceptance of B. The process is not a logical necessity, but one which will be followed through a process of moral change. Enoch describes the application of this form of the argument thus:
"Once we allow voluntary
euthanasia, she argues, we may (or will) fail to make the crucial
distinction, and then we will make the morally unacceptable outcome of
allowing involuntary euthanasia; or perhaps even though we may make the
relevant distinction, we will not act accordingly for some reason
(perhaps a political reason, or a reason that has to do with weakness of
will, or some other reason)."
— David Enoch
Glover, however, notes that this line of argument requires good
evidence that this direction will be followed, as not all boundaries are
thus pushed.
More generally, it has been argued that in employing the slippery
slope there can be an "implicit concession", as it starts from the
assumption that the initial practice is acceptable – even though it will
lead to unacceptable outcomes in the future. Nevertheless, van der Burg argues that this is not a useful concession,
as the outcomes are intended to make it clear that the initial practice
was not justifiable after all.
Response to the logical versions
Countering
the first logical version of the slippery slope argument, it is argued
that the different types of euthanasia are sufficiently distinct that it
is not "logically inconsistent" to support one version while denying
the others. It is possible to support, for example, voluntary euthanasia
while denying non-voluntary euthanasia, just as it is possible to
support both – the distinction comes not from a logical inconsistency,
but a choice of principles, such that a focus on euthanasia as personal
choice will support voluntary euthanasia but not non-voluntary
euthanasia, while a focus on a person's "best interests" may allow for
the support of both. From a more practical perspective, another option when faced with the
logical version of the argument is to simply accept the consequences.
This was the response by Duff and Campbell to Sherlock. Rather than
arguing that their premises were flawed, they argued that Sherlock was
correct: their criteria could also be applied to older children, and
thus it should be applied, as it was "probably the most caring policy
generally."
In responding to the "arbitrary line" version of the slippery slope argument, it is argued that the stance relies on the "paradox of the heap", and that it is possible to draw a line between the acceptable and unacceptable alternatives. Furthermore, in the case of euthanasia, it is possible to draw hard
lines between different types of practices. For example, there is a
clear distinction between voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia, such
that the arbitrary line approach cannot be applied.
The empirical argument
Glover
argues that the empirical argument needs to be backed by evidence, as
there are situations where we do not seem to push boundaries. Generally, two examples are discussed – Action T4, the Nazi euthanasia program in Germany between 1939 and 1941, and the Groningen Protocol in the Netherlands, which has allowed for non-voluntary euthanasia of severely deformed newborns.
Lewis notes that the focus has been on voluntary to non-voluntary
euthanasia, rather than physician-assisted suicide to voluntary
euthanasia, as there have been no instances of the latter: in
jurisdictions where physician-assisted suicide have been legalised,
there have been no moves to legalise voluntary euthanasia, while
jurisdictions that have legalised voluntary euthanasia also allowed
physician-assisted suicide at the same time.
Leo Alexander, in examining the events of the Holocaust during the Nuremberg Trials,
stated that the origins of the Nazi programs could be traced back to
"small beginnings", and presented a slippery slope argument. Others have argued that Action T4 is not an example of the empirical slippery slope, as euthanasia was still a criminal act in Germany during that time, and
there is "no record of the Nazi doctors either killing or assisting in
the suicide of a patient who was suffering intolerably from a fatal
illness".
Euthanasia historian Ian Dowbiggin linked the Nazis' Action T4
to the resistance in the West to involuntary euthanasia. He believes
that the revulsion inspired by the Nazis led to some of the early
advocates of euthanasia in all its forms in the US and UK removing
non-voluntary euthanasia from their proposed platforms.
The Groningen Protocol
Non-voluntary euthanasia is sometimes cited as one of the possible outcomes of the slippery slope
argument, in which it is claimed that permitting voluntary euthanasia
to occur will lead to the support and legalization of non-voluntary and
involuntary euthanasia. Some studies of the Netherlands after the introduction of voluntary
euthanasia state that there was no evidence to support this claim while other studies state otherwise.
A study from the Jakobovits Center for Medical Ethics in Israel argued that a form of non-voluntary euthanasia, the Groningen Protocol, has "potential to validate the slippery-slope argument against allowing euthanasia in selected populations". Anesthesiologist William Lanier says that the "ongoing evolution of
euthanasia law in the Netherlands" is evidence that a slippery slope is
"playing out in real time". Pediatrician Ola Didrik Saugstad
says that while he approves of the withholding of treatment to cause
the death of severely ill newborns where the prognosis is hopeless, he
disagrees with the active killing of such newborns. Countering this view, professor of internal medicine Margaret Battin finds that there is a lack of evidence to support slippery slope arguments. Additionally, it is argued that the public nature of the Groningen
Protocol decisions, and their evaluation by a prosecutor, prevent a
"slippery slope" from occurring.
A 1999 study by Jochemsen and Keown from the Dutch Christian Lindeboom Institute published in the peer reviewed Journal of Medical Ethics,
argued that euthanasia in the Netherlands is not well-controlled and
that there is still a significant percentage of cases of euthanasia
practiced illegally. Raanan Gillon, from the Imperial College School of Medicine, University
of London commented in 1999 that "what is shown by the empirical
findings is that restrictions on euthanasia that legal controls in the
Netherlands were supposed to have implemented are being extensively
ignored and from that point of view it is surely justifiable to
conclude, as Jochemsen and Keown do conclude, that the practice of
euthanasia in the Netherlands is in poor control." A similar conclusion was presented in 1997 by Herbert Hendin, who
argued that the situation in The Netherlands demonstrated a slippery
slope in practice, changing the attitudes of doctors over time and
moving them from tightly regulated voluntary euthanasia for the
terminally ill to the acceptance of euthanasia for people suffering from
psychological distress, and from voluntary euthanasia to the acceptance
of non-voluntary and potentially involuntary euthanasia.
An October 2007 study, published in the Journal of Medical
Ethics, found that "rates of assisted dying in Oregon and in the
Netherlands showed no evidence of heightened risk for the elderly,
women, the uninsured (inapplicable in the Netherlands, where all are
insured), people with low educational status, the poor, the physically
disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with psychiatric illnesses
including depression, or racial or ethnic minorities, compared with
background populations. The only group with a heightened risk was people
with AIDS."
A 2009 review study of euthanasia in the Netherlands concluded that no slippery slope effect has occurred, while another study of the same year found that abuse of the Dutch euthanasia system is rare. In 2010, a study found that there is no evidence that legalizing
assisted suicide will lead us down the slippery slope to involuntary
euthanasia.
Most critics rely predominantly on Dutch evidence of cases of
"termination of life without an explicit request" as evidence for the
slide from voluntary euthanasia to non-voluntary euthanasia. One commenter wrote that critics who rely on this slippery slope
argument often omit two important elements, thereby using flawed logic. First, the argument is only effective against legalization if it is
legalization which causes the slippery slope; and secondly, it is only
effective if it is used comparatively, to show that the slope is more
slippery in the Netherlands than it is in jurisdictions which have not
legalized assisted suicide or euthanasia. Since these questions have not been addressed by critics, little
attention has been paid to available evidence on causation and
comparability.
Research review studies
In the most recent review paper on euthanasia in the Netherlands, namely the 2009 paper entitled Two Decades of Research on Euthanasia from the Netherlands. What Have We Learnt and What Questions Remain?
written by researchers from the Department of Public Health in the
Netherlands, it was found that "public control and transparency of the
practice of euthanasia is to a large extent possible" and that "[n]o
slippery slope seems to have occurred". The researchers find that the legalization of euthanasia in the
Netherlands did not result in a slippery slope for medical end-of-life
practices because:
The frequency of ending of life without explicit patient request did not increase over the studied years;
There is no evidence for a higher frequency of euthanasia, compared with background populations, among:
In 2010, 4,050 persons died from euthanasia or from assisted suicide on request. According to research done by the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), University Medical Center Utrecht and Statistics Netherlands, and published in The Lancet,
this is not more than before the introduction of the "Termination of
Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act" in 2002.
Both in the Netherlands and in Belgium, the number of termination of
life without explicit request for terminally ill patients, decreased
after the introduction of the legislation about the termination of life.
In effect, the legislation did not lead to more cases of euthanasia and
assisted suicide on request.
Generic hydrolysis reaction. (The 2-way yield symbol indicates a chemical equilibrium in which hydrolysis and condensation are reversible.)
Hydrolysis (/haɪˈdrɒlɪsɪs/; from Ancient Greek hydro-'water' and lysis'to unbind') is any chemical reaction in which a molecule of water breaks one or more chemical bonds. The term is used broadly for substitution and elimination reactions in which water is the nucleophile.
Biological hydrolysis is the cleavage of biomolecules where a water molecule is consumed to effect the separation of a larger molecule into component parts. When a carbohydrate is broken into its component sugar molecules by hydrolysis (e.g., sucrose being broken down into glucose and fructose), this is recognized as saccharification.
Hydrolysis reactions can be the reverse of a condensation reaction
in which two molecules join into a larger one and eject a water
molecule. Thus hydrolysis adds water to break down molecules, whereas
condensation joins molecules through the removal of water.
Types
Hydrolysis
is a chemical process in which a molecule of water is added to a
substance, causing both the substance and water molecule to split into
two parts. In such reactions, a chemical bond is broken, with one
fragment of the target molecule (or parent molecule) gains a hydrogen ion, and the other gaining a hydroxide. In living systems, most biochemical reactions (including ATP hydrolysis) take place during the catalysis of enzymes. The catalytic action of enzymes allows for the hydrolysis of proteins, fats, oils, and carbohydrates.
Ester and amide hydrolysis occurs through nucleophilic acyl substitution where water acts as a nucleophile (a nucleus-seeking agent, e.g., water or hydroxyl ion), attacking the carbon of the carbonyl group of the ester or amide. Under acidic conditions, the carbonyl group is activated via protonation, allowing for direct nucleophilic attack by water. In an aqueous base, hydroxyl ions are better nucleophiles than polar
molecules such as water due to the negative charge localized on the
oxygen and therefore directly attack the carbonyl group.
Upon hydrolysis, an ester is converted into a carboxylic acid plus an alcohol, while an amide converts into a carboxylic acid and an amine or ammonia
(which in the presence of acid are immediately converted to ammonium
salts). One of the two oxygen groups on the carboxylic acid are derived
from a water molecule and the amine/ammonia or alcohol gains the
hydrogen ion.
Perhaps the oldest commercially practiced example of ester hydrolysis is saponification (formation of soap). It is the hydrolysis of a triglyceride (fat) with an aqueous base such as sodium hydroxide (NaOH). During the process, glycerol is formed, and the fatty acids react with the base, converting them to salts. These salts are called soaps, commonly used in households. Under biological conditions, this reaction is catalyzed by lipases for the digestion of fats, acting when adsorbed to an oil-water interface. Other esterases function in water, serving a variety of biological functions.
A key biological application of amide hydrolysis is the digestion of proteins into amino acids. Proteases, enzymes that aid digestion by causing hydrolysis of peptide bonds in proteins, catalyze the hydrolysis of peptide bonds in peptide chains, releasing polypeptide fragments two to six amino acids long. Those fragments are then broken down into single amino acids via carboxypeptidases secreted by the pancreas.
However, proteases do not catalyze the hydrolysis of all kinds of
proteins. Their action is stereo-selective: Only proteins with a certain
tertiary structure are targeted as some kind of orienting force is
needed to place the amide group in the proper position for catalysis.
The necessary contacts between an enzyme and its substrates (proteins)
are created because the enzyme folds in such a way as to form a crevice
into which the substrate fits; the crevice also contains the catalytic
groups. Therefore, proteins that do not fit into the crevice will not
undergo hydrolysis. This specificity preserves the integrity of other
proteins such as hormones, and therefore the biological system continues to function normally.
Mechanism for acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of an amide.
Many polyamide polymers such as nylon 6,6 hydrolyze in the presence of strong acids. The process leads to depolymerization.
For this reason nylon products fail by fracturing when exposed to small
amounts of acidic water. Polyesters are also susceptible to similar polymer degradation reactions. The problem is known as environmental stress cracking.
Hydrolysis is related to energy metabolism and storage. All living cells require a continual supply of energy for two main purposes: the biosynthesis of micro and macromolecules, and the active transport of ions and molecules across cell membranes. The energy derived from the oxidation
of nutrients is not used directly but, by means of a complex and long
sequence of reactions, it is channeled into a special energy-storage
molecule, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). The ATP molecule contains pyrophosphate
linkages (bonds formed when two phosphate units are combined) that
release energy when needed. ATP can undergo hydrolysis in two ways:
Firstly, the removal of terminal phosphate to form adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and inorganic phosphate, with the reaction:
ATP + H2O → ADP + Pi
Secondly, the removal of a terminal diphosphate to yield adenosine monophosphate (AMP) and pyrophosphate.
The latter usually undergoes further cleavage into its two constituent
phosphates. This results in biosynthesis reactions, which usually occur
in chains, that can be driven in the direction of synthesis when the
phosphate bonds have undergone hydrolysis.
Polysaccharides
Sucrose. The glycoside bond is represented by the central oxygen atom, which holds the two monosaccharide units together.
The hydrolysis of polysaccharides to soluble sugars can be recognized as saccharification. Malt made from barley is used as a source of β-amylase to break down starch into the disaccharide maltose, which can be used by yeast to produce beer. Other amylase enzymes may convert starch to glucose or to oligosaccharides. Cellulose is first hydrolyzed to cellobiose by cellulase and then cellobiose is further hydrolyzed to glucose by beta-glucosidase. Ruminants such as cows are able to hydrolyze cellulose into cellobiose and then glucose because of symbiotic bacteria that produce cellulases.
DNA
Hydrolysis of DNA occurs at a significant rate in vivo. For example, it is estimated that in each human cell 2,000 to 10,000 DNA purine bases turn over every day due to hydrolytic depurination, and that this is largely counteracted by specific rapid DNA repair processes. Hydrolytic DNA damages that fail to be accurately repaired may contribute to carcinogenesis and ageing.
Metal ions are Lewis acids, and in aqueous solution they form metal aquo complexes of the general formula M(H2O)nm+. The aqua ions undergo hydrolysis, to a greater or lesser extent. The first hydrolysis step is given generically as
M(H2O)nm+ + H2O ⇌ M(H2O)n−1(OH)(m−1)+ + H3O+
Thus the aqua cations behave as acids in terms of Brønsted–Lowry acid–base theory. This effect is easily explained by considering the inductive effect of the positively charged metal ion, which weakens the O−H bond of an attached water molecule, making the liberation of a proton relatively easy.
The dissociation constant, pKa, for this reaction is more or less linearly related to the charge-to-size ratio of the metal ion. Ions with low charges, such as Na+ are very weak acids with almost imperceptible hydrolysis. Large divalent ions such as Ca2+, Zn2+, Sn2+ and Pb2+ have a pKa of 6 or more and would not normally be classed as acids, but small divalent ions such as Be2+ undergo extensive hydrolysis. Trivalent ions like Al3+ and Fe3+ are weak acids whose pKa is comparable to that of acetic acid. Solutions of salts such as BeCl2 or Al(NO3)3 in water are noticeably acidic; the hydrolysis can be suppressed by adding an acid such as nitric acid, making the solution more acidic.
Hydrolysis may proceed beyond the first step, often with the formation of polynuclear species via the process of olation. Some "exotic" species such as Sn3(OH)2+4 are well characterized. Hydrolysis tends to proceed as pH rises leading, in many cases, to the precipitation of a hydroxide such as Al(OH)3 or AlO(OH). These substances, major constituents of bauxite, are known as laterites
and are formed by leaching from rocks of most of the ions other than
aluminium and iron and subsequent hydrolysis of the remaining aluminium
and iron.
Mechanism strategies
Acetals, imines, and enamines can be converted back into ketones by treatment with excess water under acid-catalyzed conditions: RO·OR−H3O−O; NR·H3O−O; RNR−H3O−O.
Catalysis
Acidic hydrolysis
Acid catalysis can be applied to hydrolyses. For example, in the conversion of cellulose or starch to glucose. Carboxylic acids can be produced from acid hydrolysis of esters.
Acids catalyze hydrolysis of nitriles to amides. Acid hydrolysis does not usually refer to the acid catalyzed addition of the elements of water to double or triple bonds by electrophilic addition as may originate from a hydration reaction. Acid hydrolysis is used to prepare monosaccharide with the help of mineral acids but formic acid and trifluoroacetic acid have been used.
Acid hydrolysis can be utilized in the pretreatment of cellulosic
material, so as to cut the interchain linkages in hemicellulose and
cellulose.
The reaction is often used to solubilize solid organic matter. Chemical drain cleaners take advantage of this method to dissolve hair and fat in pipes. The reaction is also used to dispose of human and other animal remains as an alternative to traditional burial or cremation.
In psychology, narcissistic withdrawal is a stage in narcissism and a narcissistic defense
characterized by "turning away from parental figures, and by the
fantasy that essential needs can be satisfied by the individual alone". In adulthood, it is more likely to be an ego defense with repressed
origins. Individuals feel obliged to withdraw from any relationship
that threatens to be more than short-term, avoiding the risk of narcissistic injury, and will instead retreat into a comfort zone. The idea was first described by Melanie Klein in her psychoanalytic research on stages of narcissism in children.
Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud originally used the term narcissism to denote the process of the projection of the individual's libido from its object onto themselves; his essay "On Narcissism"
saw him explore the idea through an examination of such everyday events
as illness or sleep: "the condition of sleep, too, resembles illness in
implying a narcissistic withdrawal of the positions of the libido on to the subject's own self". Later, in "Mourning and Melancholia", he examined how "a withdrawal of the libido [...] on a narcissistic basis" in depression could allow both a freezing and a preservation of affection: "by taking flight into the ego, love escapes extinction".
Otto Fenichel would extend his analysis to borderline
conditions, demonstrating how "in a reactive withdrawal of libido
[...], a regression to narcissism is also a regression to the primal
narcissistic omnipotence which makes its reappearance in the form of megalomania".
For Melanie Klein,
however, a more positive element came to the forefront: "frustration,
which stimulates narcissistic withdrawal, is also [...] a fundamental
factor in adaptation to reality". Similarly, D. W. Winnicott
observed "that there is an aspect of withdrawal that is healthy",
considering that it might be "helpful to think of withdrawal as a
condition in which the person concerned (child or adult) holds a
regressed part of the self and nurses it, at the expense of external
relationships".
Differing from the prior perspectives of psychoanalysts, Heinz Kohut considered that "the narcissistically vulnerable individual responds to actual (or anticipated) narcissistic injury either with shamefaced withdrawal or with narcissistic rage". Otto Kernberg also saw the difference between normal narcissism and "pathological narcissism...[as] withdrawal into "splendid isolation"" in the latter instance; while Herbert Rosenfeld
was concerned with "states of withdrawal commonly seen in narcissistic
patients in which death is idealised as superior to life", as well as
with "the alternation of states of narcissistic withdrawal and ego
disintegration".
Schizoid withdrawal
Closely related to narcissistic withdrawal is schizoid withdrawal,
"the escape from too great pressure by abolishing emotional
relationships altogether in favour of an introverted and withdrawn
personality". These "fantastic refuges from need are forms of emotional starvation, megalomanias and distortions of reality born of fear" that maladaptively complicate an individual's capacity to enjoy a relationship.
Sociology
"Narcissists
will isolate themselves, leave their families, ignore others, do
anything to preserve a special [...] sense of self". Arguably, however, all such "narcissistic withdrawal is haunted by its alter ego: the ghost of a full social presence" – with people living their lives "along a continuum which ranges from
the maximal degree of social commitment [...] to a maximal degree of
social withdrawal".
If "of all modes of narcissistic withdrawal, depression is the most crippling", a contributing factor may be that "depressed persons come to appreciate
consciously how much social effort is in fact required in the normal
course of keeping one's usual place in undertakings".
Therapy
Object relations theory would see the process of therapy as one whereby the therapist enabled his or her patient to have "resituated the object from the purely schizoid usage to
the shared schizoid usage (initially) until eventually [...] the object
relation – discussing, arguing, idealizing, hating, etc. – emerged".
Fenichel considered that in patients where "their narcissistic
regression is a reaction to narcissistic injuries; if they are shown
this fact
and given time to face the real injuries and to develop other types of
reaction, they may be helped enormously" Neville Symington
however estimated that "often a kind of war develops between analyst
and patient, with the analyst trying to haul the patient out of the
cocoon [...] his narcissistic envelope [...] and the patient pulling for
all his worth in the other direction".
Cultural analogues
In Joanne Greenberg's novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,
the therapist of the protagonist wonders "if there is a pattern.... You
give up a secret to our view and then you get so scared that you run
for cover into your panic or into your secret world. To live there."
More generally, the 1920s have been described as a time of "changes
in which women were channelled toward narcissistic withdrawal rather
than developing strong egos".
Consumerism is a socio-cultural and economic phenomenon that is typical of industrialized societies. It is characterized by the continuous acquisition of goods and services
in ever-increasing quantities. In contemporary consumer society, the
purchase and the consumption of products have evolved beyond the mere
satisfaction of basic human needs, transforming into an activity that is not only economic but also cultural, social, and even identity-forming. It emerged in Western Europe and the United States during the Industrial Revolution and became widespread around the 20th century. In economics, consumerism refers to policies that emphasize consumption. It is the consideration that the free choice
of consumers should strongly inform the choice by manufacturers of what
is produced and how, and therefore influence the economic organization
of a society.
Consumerism has been criticized by both individuals who choose other ways of participating in the economy (i.e. choosing simple living or slow living) and environmentalists concerned about its impact on the planet. Experts often assert that consumerism has physical limits, such as growth imperative and overconsumption, which have larger impacts on the environment. This includes direct effects like overexploitation of natural resources or large amounts of waste from disposable goods and significant effects like climate change.
Similarly, some research and criticism focuses on the sociological
effects of consumerism, such as reinforcement of class barriers and
creation of inequalities.
Evolution of the term
The term "consumerism" has several definitions. These definitions may not be related to each other and they conflict with each other.
In a 1955 speech, John Bugas, a vice president of the Ford Motor Company, coined the term "consumerism" as a substitute for "capitalism" and better describe the American economy:
The term consumerism would
pin the tag where it actually belongs – on Mr. Consumer, the real boss
and beneficiary of the American system. It would pull the rug right out
from under our unfriendly critics who have blasted away so long and loud
at capitalism.
Bugas's definition aligned with Austrian economics founder Carl Menger's conception of consumer sovereignty, as laid out in his 1871 book Principles of Economics, whereby consumer preferences, valuations, and choices control the economy entirely. This view stood in direct opposition to Karl Marx's critique of the capitalist economy as a system of exploitation.
For social criticVance Packard, however, "consumerism" was not a positive term about consumer practices but rather a negative term, meaning excessive materialism and wastefulness. In the advertisements for his 1960 book The Waste Makers, the word "consumerism" was prominently featured in a negative way.
One sense of the term relates to efforts to support consumers' interests. By the early 1970s it had become the accepted term for the field and began to be used in these ways:
Consumerism is the concept that consumers should be informed decision makers in the marketplace. In this sense consumerism is the study and practice of matching consumers with trustworthy information, such as product testing reports.
Consumerism is the concept that the marketplace itself is responsible for ensuring social justice through fair economic practices. Consumer protection policies and laws compel manufacturers to make products safe.
Consumerism refers to the field of studying, regulating, or interacting with the marketplace. The consumer movement
is the social movement which refers to all actions and all entities
within the marketplace which give consideration to the consumer.
While the above definitions were becoming established, other people began using the term consumerism to mean "high levels of consumption". This definition has gained popularity since the 1970s and began to be used in these ways:
Consumerism is the selfish and frivolous collecting of products, or economic materialism. In this sense consumerism is negative and in opposition to positive lifestyles of anti-consumerism and simple living.
Consumerism is a force from the marketplace which destroys individuality and harms society.[3] It is related to globalization and in protest against this some people promote the "anti-globalization movement".
History
Origins
The consumer society developed throughout the late 17th century and the 18th century. Peck addresses the assertion made by consumption scholars about writers
such as "Nicholas Barbon and Bernard Mandeville" in "Luxury and War:
Reconsidering Luxury Consumption in Seventeenth-Century England" and how
their emphasis on the financial worth of luxury changed society's
perceptions of luxury. They argue that a significant transformation
occurred in the eighteenth century when the focus shifted from
court-centered luxury spending to consumer-driven luxury consumption,
which was fueled by middle-class purchases of new products.
The English economy expanded significantly in the 17th century
due to new methods of agriculture that rendered it feasible to cultivate
a larger area. A time of heightened demand for luxury goods and
increased cultural interaction was reflected in the wide range of luxury products
that the aristocracy and affluent merchants imported from nations like
Italy and the Low Countries. This expansion of luxury consumption in
England was facilitated by state policies that encouraged cultural
borrowing and import substitution, hence enabling the purchase of luxury
items. Luxury goods included sugar, tobacco, tea, and coffee; these were increasingly grown on vast plantations (historically by slave labor) in the Caribbean as demand steadily rose. In particular, sugar consumption in Britain increased by a factor of 20 during the 18th century.
Furthermore, the non-importation movement
commenced in the 18th century, more precisely from 1764 to 1776, as
Witkowski's article "Colonial Consumers in Revolt: Buyer Values and
Behavior during the Nonimportation Movement, 1764–1776" discusses. He
describes the evolving development of consumer culture in the context of
"colonial America". An emphasis on efficiency and economical
consumption gave way to a preference for comfort, convenience, and
importing products. During this time of transformation, colonial
consumers had to choose between rising material desires and conventional
values.
The pattern of intensified consumption became particularly visible in the 17th century in London, where the gentry
and prosperous merchants took up residence and promoted a culture of
luxury and consumption that slowly extended across socio-economic
boundaries. Marketplaces expanded as shopping centres, such as the New
Exchange, opened in 1609 by Robert Cecil in the Strand.
Shops started to become important as places for Londoners to meet and
socialize and became popular destinations alongside the theatre. From
1660, Restoration London also saw the growth of luxury buildings as advertisements for social position, with speculative architects like Nicholas Barbon and Lionel Cranfield operating. This then-scandalous line of thought caused great controversy with the publication of the influential work Fable of the Bees in 1714, in which Bernard Mandeville argued that a country's prosperity ultimately lay in the self-interest of the consumer.
Josiah Wedgwood's pottery, a status symbol of consumerism in the late 18th century
The pottery entrepreneur and inventor, Josiah Wedgwood,
noticed the way that aristocratic fashions, themselves subject to
periodic changes in direction, slowly filtered down through different
classes of society. He pioneered the use of marketing techniques to
influence and manipulate the movement of prevailing tastes and
preferences to cause the aristocracy to accept his goods; it was only a
matter of time before the middle classes also rapidly bought up his
goods. Other producers of a wide range of other products followed his
example, and the spread and importance of consumption fashions became
steadily more important. Since then, advertising has played a major role in fostering a
consumerist society, marketing goods through various platforms in nearly
all aspects of human life, and pushing the message that the potential customer's personal life requires some product.
The Industrial Revolution dramatically increased the availability of consumer goods, although it was still primarily focused on the capital goods sector and industrial infrastructure (i.e., mining, steel, oil, transportation networks, communications networks, industrial cities, financial centers, etc.). The advent of the department store
represented a paradigm shift in the experience of shopping. Customers
could now buy an astonishing variety of goods, all in one place, and
shopping became a popular leisure activity. While previously the norm
had been the scarcity of resources, the industrial era
created an unprecedented economic situation. For the first time in
history products were available in outstanding quantities, at
outstandingly low prices, therefore available to virtually everyone in
the industrialized West.
By the turn of the 20th century, the average worker in Western
Europe or the United States still spent approximately 80–90% of their
income on food and other necessities. What was needed to propel
consumerism, was a system of mass production and consumption, exemplified by Henry Ford, an American car manufacturer. After observing the assembly lines in the meat-packing industry, Frederick Winslow Taylor brought his theory of scientific management
to the organization of the assembly line in other industries; this
unleashed incredible productivity and reduced the costs of commodities
produced on assembly lines around the world.
Consumerism has long had intentional underpinnings, rather than just developing out of capitalism. As an example, Earnest Elmo Calkins
noted to fellow advertising executives in 1932 that "consumer
engineering must see to it that we use up the kind of goods we now
merely use", while the domestic theorist Christine Frederick
observed in 1929 that "the way to break the vicious deadlock of a low
standard of living is to spend freely, and even waste creatively".
The older term and concept of "conspicuous consumption" originated at the turn of the 20th century in the writings of sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen.
The term describes an apparently irrational and confounding form of
economic behaviour. Veblen's scathing proposal that this unnecessary
consumption is a form of status display is made in darkly humorous
observations like the following:
It is true of dress in even a
higher degree than of most other items of consumption, that people will
undergo a very considerable degree of privation in the comforts or the
necessaries of life to afford what is considered a decent amount of
wasteful consumption; so that it is by no means an uncommon occurrence,
in an inclement climate, for people to go ill clad to appear well
dressed.
The term "conspicuous consumption" spread to describe consumerism in
the United States in the 1960s, but was soon linked to debates about media theory, culture jamming, and its corollary productivism.
By 1920 most Americans had experimented with occasional installment buying.
Television and American consumerism
The
advent of the television in the late 1940s proved to be an attractive
opportunity for advertisers, who could reach potential consumers in the
home using lifelike images and sound. The introduction of mass
commercial television positively impacted retail sales. The television
motivated consumers to purchase more products and upgrade whatever they
currently had. In the United States, a new consumer culture developed centered around buying products, especially automobiles and other durable goods, to increase their social status. Woojin Kim of the University of California, Berkeley, argues that sitcoms of this era also helped to promote the idea of suburbia.
According to Woojin, the attraction of television advertising has
brought an improvement in Americans' social status. Watching television
programs has become an important part of people's cultural life.
Television advertising can enrich and change the content of advertising
from hearing and vision and make people in contact with it. The image of
television advertising is realistic, and it is easy to have an interest
and desire to buy advertising goods, At the same time, the audience
intentionally or unintentionally compares and comments on the advertised
goods while appreciating the TV advertisements, arouses the interest of
the audience by attracting attention, and forms a buying idea, which is
conducive to enhancing the buying confidence. Therefore, TV can be used
as a media way to accelerate and affect people's desire to buy
products.
Madeline Levine criticized what she saw as a large change in American culture – "a shift away from values of community, spirituality, and integrity, and toward competition, materialism and disconnection."
Businesses have realized that wealthy consumers are the most
attractive targets of marketing. The upper class's tastes, lifestyles,
and preferences trickle down to become the standard for all consumers.
The not-so-wealthy consumers can "purchase something new that will speak
of their place in the tradition of affluence". A consumer can have the instant gratification of purchasing an expensive item to improve social status.
Emulation is also a core component of 21st century consumerism.
As a general trend, regular consumers seek to emulate those who are
above them in the social hierarchy. The poor strive to imitate the
wealthy and the wealthy imitate celebrities and other icons. The
celebrity endorsement of products can be seen as evidence of the desire
of modern consumers to purchase products partly or solely to emulate
people of higher social status. This purchasing behavior may co-exist in
the mind of a consumer with an image of oneself as being an
individualist.
Cultural capital, the intangible social value of goods, is not solely generated by cultural pollution. Subcultures also manipulate the value and prevalence of certain commodities through the process of bricolage. Bricolage is the process by which mainstream products are adopted and transformed by subcultures. These items develop a function and meaning that differs from their
corporate producer's intent. In many cases, commodities that have
undergone bricolage often develop political meanings.
For example, Doc Martens, originally marketed as workers boots, gained popularity with the punk movement and AIDS activism groups and became symbols of an individual's place in that social group. When corporate America recognized the growing popularity of the brand,
it underwent another change in cultural meaning through
counter-bricolage. The widespread sale and marketing of Doc Martens
brought them back into the mainstream. While corporate America reaped
the ever-growing profits of the increasingly expensive boot and those
modeled after its style, Doc Martens lost their original political
association. Consumers used Doc Martens and related items to create an
"individualized" sense of identity by appropriating statement items from subcultures they admired.
Authors Steven Quartz and Anette Asp make a similar argument that changing notions of "cool"
affect consumption patterns. Items that cost less, and would normally
be lower in social status according to the old rules of conspicuous
consumption, can actually rise in status if they are associated with a
cool, rebellious subculture. As examples, the authors cite leather jackets popularized in 1950s
motorcycle movies, or the cachet of "distressed clothing", or the tech
entrepreneur who chooses to wear a T-shirt and hoodie instead of an
elegant suit. Quartz and Asp have labeled this trend "rebellious
consumption", and assert that it has altered advertising, consumer
behavior, and even has political implications since less-well-off people
can feel content with their inexpensive but "cool" possessions.
In recent decades, consumerism has evolved into an organized
movement to enhance the power and rights of buyers in relation to
sellers. Consumer advocates believe that sellers enjoy an advantage in
the traditional balance of power, for instance, the right to introduce
any product in any size or style, the right to change a product's price
at any time, the right to spend any amount to promote a product, and the
right to use any message to encourage product purchases. Besides a
buyer's principal right, i.e., not to buy, advocates have lobbied for
expanded, enforceable buyer rights such as the right to be well informed
about important aspects of a product, and the right to be protected
against questionable products and marketing practices.
The American Dream has long been associated with consumerism. According to Sierra Club's
Dave Tilford, "With less than 5 percent of world population, the U.S.
uses one-third of the world's paper, a quarter of the world's oil, 23
percent of the coal, 27 percent of the aluminum, and 19 percent of the
copper."
China is the world's fastest-growing consumer market. According to biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, "If everyone consumed resources at the US level, you will need another four or five Earths."
With the development of the economy, consumers' awareness of
protecting their rights and interests is growing, and consumer demand is
growing. Online commerce has expanded the consumer market and enhanced
consumer information and market transparency. Digital fields not only
bring advantages and convenience but also cause many problems and
increase the opportunities for consumers to suffer damage.
Under the virtual network environment, on the one hand,
consumers' privacy protection is vulnerable to infringement, driven by
the development of hacker technology and the Internet, on the other
hand, consumers' right to know is the basic right of consumers. When
purchasing goods and receiving services, we need the real situation of
institutional services. Finally, in the Internet era, consumers' demand
is increasing, and we also need to protect consumers' rights and
interests to improve consumers' rights and interests and promote the
operation of the economic market.
Today's society has entered the era of entertainment and the
Internet. Most people spend more time browsing on mobile phones than
face-to-face. The convenience of social media has a subtle impact on the
public and unconsciously changes people's consumption habits. The
socialized Internet is gradually developing, such as Twitter, websites,
news and social media, with sharing and participation as the core,
consumers share product information and opinions through social media. At the same time, by understanding the reputation of the brand on
social media, consumers can easily change their original attitude
towards the brand. The information provided by social media helps
consumers shorten the time of thinking about products and
decision-making, so as to improve consumers' initiative in purchase
decision-making and improve consumers' shopping and decision-making
quality to a certain extent.
Buy Nothing Day demonstration in San Francisco, November 2000Shop Until You Drop by Banksy, in London
Andreas Eisingerich discusses in his article "Vision statement:
Behold the extreme consumers...and learn to embrace them" that "In many
critical contexts, consumerism is used to describe the tendency
of people to identify strongly with products or services they consume,
especially those with commercial brand-names and perceived status-symbolism appeal, e.g. a luxury car, designer clothing, or expensive jewelry". A major criticism of consumerism is that it serves the interests of capitalism.
Consumerism can take extreme forms, to the extent that consumers
will sacrifice significant time and income not only to make purchases,
but also to actively support a certain firm or brand. As stated by Gary Cross in his book An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America,
"consumerism succeeded where other ideologies failed because it
concretely expressed the cardinal political ideals of the century –
liberty and democracy – and with relatively little self-destructive
behavior or personal humiliation." He discusses how consumerism won in
its forms of expression.
Tim Kasser, in his book The High Price of Materialism,
examines how the culture of consumerism and materialism affects our
happiness and well-being. The book argues that people who value wealth
and possessions more than other things tend to have lower levels of
satisfaction, self-esteem, and intimacy, and higher levels of anxiety,
depression, and insecurity. The book also explores how materialistic
values harm our relationships, our communities, and our environment, and
suggests ways to reduce materialism and increase our quality of life.
Opponents of consumerism argue that many luxuries and unnecessary
consumer-products may act as a social mechanism allowing people to
identify like-minded individuals through the display of similar
products, again utilizing aspects of status-symbolism to judge socioeconomic status and social stratification.
Some people believe relationships with a product or brand name are
substitutes for healthy human relationships lacking in societies, and
along with consumerism, create a cultural hegemony, and are part of a general process of social control in modern society.
Our enormously productive economy
demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the
buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual
satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things
consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an
ever-increasing rate.
Figures who arguably do not wholly buy into consumerism include German historian Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), who said: "Life in America is exclusively economic in structure and lacks depth", and French writer Georges Duhamel (1884–1966), who held American materialism up as "a beacon of mediocrity that threatened to eclipse French civilization". Francis Fukuyama blames consumerism for moral compromises.
Moreover, some critics have expressed concern about the role commodities play in the definition of one's self. In his 1976 book Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, historian and media theorist Stuart Ewen
introduced what he referred to as the "commodification of
consciousness", and coined the term "commodity self" to describe an
identity built by the goods we consume.
For example, people often identify as PC or Mac users, or define
themselves as a Coke drinker rather than a Pepsi drinker. The ability to
choose one product out of a great number of others allows a person to
build a sense of "unique" individuality, despite the prevalence of Mac
users or the nearly identical tastes of Coke and Pepsi. By owning a product from a certain brand, one's ownership becomes a
vehicle of presenting an identity that is associated with the attitude
of the brand. The idea of individual choice is exploited by corporations
that claim to sell "uniqueness" and the building blocks of an identity.
The invention of the commodity self is a driving force of consumerist
societies, preying upon the deep human need to build a sense of self.
Environmental impact
Critics of consumerism point out that consumerist societies are more prone to damage the environment, contribute to global warming and use resources at a higher rate than other societies. Jorge Majfud
says that "Trying to reduce environmental pollution without reducing
consumerism is like combatting drug trafficking without reducing the
drug addiction."
Pope Francis also critiqued consumerism in his encyclicalLaudato Si': On Care For Our Common Home. He critiqued the harm consumerism does to the environment and states,
"The analysis of environmental problems cannot be separated from the
analysis of human, family, work-related and urban contexts, nor from how
individuals relate to themselves, which leads in turn to how they
relate to others and to the environment." Pope Francis believed the obsession with consumerism leads individuals
further away from their humanity and obscures the interrelated nature
between humans and the environment.
Another critic is James Gustave Speth. He argues that the growth imperative represents the main goal of capitalistic consumerism. In his book The Bridge at the Edge of the World
he notes, "Basically, the economic system does not work when it comes
to protecting environmental resources, and the political system does not
work when it comes to correcting the economic system".
In an opinion segment of New Scientist magazine published in August 2009, reporter Andy Coghlan cited William Rees of the University of British Columbia and epidemiologistWarren Hern of the University of Colorado at Boulder
saying that human beings, despite considering themselves civilized
thinkers, are "subconsciously still driven by an impulse for survival,
domination and expansion ... an impulse which now finds expression in
the idea that inexorable economic growth is the answer to everything,
and, given time, will redress all the world's existing inequalities."
According to figures presented by Rees at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America,
human society is in a "global overshoot", consuming 30% more material
than is sustainable from the world's resources. Rees went on to state
that at present, 85 countries are exceeding their domestic
"bio-capacities", and compensate for their lack of local material by
depleting the stocks of other countries, which have a material surplus
due to their lower consumption. Not only that, but McCraken indicates that how consumer goods and
services are bought, created and used should be taken under
consideration when studying consumption.
Not all anti-consumerists oppose consumption in itself, but they argue against increasing the consumption of resources beyond what is environmentally sustainable. Jonathan Porritt
writes that consumers are often unaware of the negative environmental
impacts of producing many modern goods and services, and that the
extensive advertising industry only serves to reinforce increasing
consumption.
Conservation scientists Lian Pin Koh and Tien Ming Lee, discuss
that in the 21st century, the damage to forests and biodiversity cannot
be dealt with only by the shift towards "Green" initiatives such as
"sustainable production, green consumerism,
and improved production practices". They argue that consumption in
developing and emerging countries needs to be less excessive. Likewise, other ecological economists such as Herman Daly and Tim Jackson recognize the inherent conflict between consumer-driven consumption and planet-wide ecological degradation.
American environmental historian and sociologist Jason W. Moore, in his book Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism
points out that the challenge of addressing both underconsumption and
overconsumption of resources lies at the heart of the world's primary
sustainability dilemma. While significant portions of the global
population struggle to meet basic needs, the resource-intensive
lifestyles of affluent societies — characterized by car dependency,
frequent air travel, high meat consumption, and an apparently limitless
appetite for consumer goods like clothing and technological devices —
are key drivers of the unsustainable practices.
Consumerism as cultural ideology
In the 21st century's globalized economy, consumerism has become a noticeable part of the culture. Critics of this phenomenon have not only raised concerns about its
environmental sustainability, but also its cultural implications.
However, a number of scholars have explored the relationship between
environmentalism and consumerism within the context of a market economy
society.
Discussions of the environmental implications of consumerist ideologies in works by economists James Gustave Speth and Naomi Klein, and consumer cultural historian Gary Cross. Leslie Sklair proposes the criticism through the idea of culture-ideology of consumerism in his works. He says that,
First, capitalism entered a
qualitatively new globalizing phase in the 1950s. As the electronic
revolution got underway, significant changes began to occur in the
productivity of capitalist factories, systems of extraction, processing
of raw materials, product design, marketing and distribution of goods
and services. [...] Second, the technical and social relations that
structured the mass media all over the world made it very easy for new
consumerist lifestyles to become the dominant motif for these media,
which became in time extraordinarily efficient vehicles for the
broadcasting of the culture-ideology of consumerism globally.
Today, people are universally and continuously being exposed to mass consumerism and product placement
in the media or even in their daily lives. The line between
information, entertainment, and promotion of products has been blurred,
thus explaining how people have become more reformulated into
consumerist behaviours. Shopping centers are a representative example of a place where people
are explicitly exposed to an environment that welcomes and encourages
consumption.
For example, in 1993, Goss wrote that the shopping center
designers "strive to present an alternative rationale for the shopping
center's existence, manipulate shoppers' behavior through the
configuration of space, and consciously design a symbolic landscape that
provokes associative moods and dispositions in the shopper". On the prevalence of consumerism in daily life, historian Gary Cross
says that "The endless variation of clothing, travel, and entertainment
provided opportunity for practically everyone to find a personal niche,
no matter their race, age, gender or class."
Arguably, the success of the consumerist cultural ideology can be
witnessed all around the world. People who rush to the mall to buy
products and end up spending money with their credit cards can easily become entrenched in the financial system of capitalist globalization.
Since consumerism began, various individuals and groups have
consciously sought an alternative lifestyle. These movements range on a
spectrum from moderate "simple living", "eco-conscious shopping", and "localvore"/"buying local", to Freeganism on the extreme end. Building on these movements, the discipline of ecological economics addresses the macro-economic, social and ecological implications of a primarily consumer-driven economy.
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