I shop therefore I am?

In New York, only a day after the towers fell, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani counselled his trembling constituents to "show you're not afraid. Go to restaurants. Go shopping." When the world's people asked how they could help, he responded, "Come here and spend money." Shopping became a patriotic duty. Buy that flat-screen TV, our leaders commanded, or the terrorists will have won.
(...)

We take the vow. Starting January 1 2004, my partner Paul and I will buy only necessities for sustenance, health and business - groceries, insulin for our diabetic cat, toilet paper, internet access. I am not primarily out to save money, though I'll be delighted if that happens. I have no illusion that forgoing this CD or that skirt is going to bring down consumer culture - I don't even know if I want to bring it down.

(...)

Materially, we will survive. That's the least of my worries. But, I ask myself, can a person have a social, community or family life, a business, a connection to the culture, an identity, even a self, outside the realm of purchased things and experiences?
(...)

If anyone can make it through a non-buying year, I figure, Paul and I can. We're both self-employed and work at home, conducting most of our business by phone and email. We have no office rents; our work outfits - pyjamas and pyjama equivalents - require no dry cleaning. We make our own schedules.

(...)

Research shows that just about everyone thinks she needs the things she buys and considers almost everything she wants a necessity. We're not greedy, we say. It's everyone else who is acquiring useless stuff.

(...)

Not patronising cafes, bars or restaurants has made social life, and especially business life, awkward. In Vermont in winter, with two feet of snow on the ground, you can't exactly hold a meeting on a park bench. I realise I'm forfeiting more than convenience. I'm losing conviviality and communion, which is a lubricant for deal-making both professional and personal.

(...)
Not Buying is becoming a habit. When I'm picking up groceries at the co-op I don't even think about grabbing an egg roll from the cooler; when I'm driving, I have no impulse to stop for coffee. I don't read magazine ads, and I peruse the mail-order catalogues casually, like a woman declining the advances of a lover who no longer thrills her.
(...)

Our year is over. Are we excited, relieved? That's not how either of us feels. Today, I am calm. Paul is wistful. For him, it's been one of the best of our 13 years together. We have had a joint project. As Paul and I withdrew from private consumptions this year, we found ourselves more than ever out "in public". But we also became more intimate with the back roads of the places we live and with each other, doing what Paul calls "embracing the ordinary".

DO Read All :)