Need: The Consumer Religion and the Hierarchy of Needs.

Our identities are based on several components, some of those are fixed and some of those are changeable. The fixed ones are things like nationality, age, and gender. The changeable ones include birth given aspects that can be changed, like hair colour, upbringing, language, and, for some of us, religion.

Most of the generations living just now will remember when our lives were based upon, predominantly, Christian principles of loving fellow man, love for ourselves, humility and integrity. Most religions preach the same fundamental values so, essentially all religion is the same in the context that it is nourishment for the ‘soul.’

Our lives are based upon the fulfilment of five levels of needs. These start with the fundamental physiological needs like eating and drinking, then as the hierarchy moves up it passes the need for security, love, self-esteem, and finally self-actualisation is the highest level. Religion used to provide for those needs, it used to encourage us to love and be loved, to feel safe in the knowledge of our faith, to have self-esteem in ourselves and finally to help us feel one hundred percent gratified with our lives, and our success, because we had a belief and a knowledge that there was more to life than the objects that surround us. Our needs were fulfilled through our faith in religion and our belief and awareness of an inner soul. Attendance at church is evidence enough to claim that we were aware of the need to nourish our inner, psychological selves.

It all started to change though, as consumerism became the forefront of living, and the material possessions in the world started to provide a social gratification, there was no longer a need to believe in something that was intangible. Why would you need to when you could believe in Nike, Coca-Cola or Sony: the lust and desire for objects overshadowed the religious precepts that our nation was, not too long ago, built upon.

This has lead to a paradigm shift in the hierarchy of needs. Based upon my own research and theories I have come to the conclusion that the needs of the individual are no longer represented by a triangle, but more-so a circle, or sphere.

Based upon the original hierarchy determined by Maslow, my own theory starts similarly with the Physiological needs in the centre. It is a small circle that is the pinnacle and inner most important need. It ensures our basic survival and it always requires us to consume in order to fulfil it.

The middle circle is our need to love and be loved, our need for belonging, stability and security. This ring encases the physiological needs because we are now more focused on achieving more than just survival. Basic survival is taken for granted and our concentrations now lie on making consumer choices that will ensure we feel safe, and we are loved. This includes making fashion decisions in order to be accepted by friends, and selecting brands that will ensure stability – those that are known and expected to provide high quality, thus, making the consumer decision process easier.The last ring and circle is self-actualisation and self-esteem. It is our top priority and we use consumerism to make us feel good about ourselves, to help us feel like we belong, or that we are more successful than others.

This is our new religion, this is what we have replaced spirituality with: objects. Christmas time is one of the prime examples. What used to be a pagan holiday, adopted by the Christians to honour the birth of their saviour has now been passed on to the corporate companies to exploit and make profit.

My Mum recounted a story to me recently about the introduction of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. It would have been somewhere in the mid 80s. Presents, gifts and toys were always a treat, and the smallest present would suffice. I remember Christmas in my young childhood, I would be overwhelmed with excitement at the prospects of receiving presents, and new toys. I’m sure I had already formed my Sindy doll and My Little Pony obsession, so any new additions to the fold were always welcome.

This particular year there was a huge push and market for Cabbage Patch Dolls. Everyone wanted one, and everyone had to have one for Christmas. It was this point that, my Mum has decided, was the turning point for consumerism - she stakes the blame solely on the Cabbage Patch. Naturally, like every other child in school, and everyone on the street who had a TV, I wanted a Cabbage Patch doll. They were in short supply and high demand, and they also cost £20. Which, in the mid 80s, was a lot of money. Usually the average Christmas gift would total in around £10, to double that price was a huge risk taken by manufacturers and the marketers. It worked though, and since then the prices have risen and the quality has dropped,
but as long as the product is in short supply and high demand, it is the must have toy for the Christmas season. If you receive one, you are the luckiest, most popular and coolest person in school, on the street and in life.

I never received a cabbage patch kids doll until a while after their release, and it was only a 4-inch plastic figure. But it made me happy. It had the brand, it had the woollen hair, and it almost looked like me. I had made a connection with an object that I had longed for, and when I achieved it, it fulfilled my need of love, and self-gratification, because socially, I had the object it would take to be successful.

That is the consumer religion, obtaining the inner happiness and joy with a product. Unfortunately we will grow out of that product socially, which means we will loose the inner happiness it had provided. This will lead to a constant feeling of instability and a need to keep looking for the item that will never let us down, that will always portray our changing inner identity and that will always satisfy our wants which, appear, to us, to be needs.