The so-called “consumer downgrade” is actually the adjustment of the abnormal desire for shopping and possession to a normal state, not necessarily to tighten the belt and save money, but to cool down and pursue quality more than quantity.”This topic has been floating on my Douban page for a long time, but I haven’t been able to organize the language to say anything about it. It is a very grand topic, or a subject, which may concern the future trend of people’s material pursuit in the whole society.

Chinese people’s view of consumption is changing silently. People are becoming calm and sensible after the sweep of consumerism, and many people are beginning to reflect on their previous consumption behavior, which was almost crazy. Too much stuff piles up in life, making space swell and wasting more time to deal with it – it makes life more difficult and complicated.

I was inspired by “The Post-Materialistic Age”, which I just finished reading, which discusses how we should vent and place our ‘materialistic desires’ once the human standard of living has reached subsistence. Parts of it are still obscure, but some of the author’s points had a profound impact on me::

“We don’t have that big appetite to digest the resources we have possessed, and our physical condition to consume material resources is too limited. To show off with material resources is not only absurd, but also self-inflicted. –from The Post-Materialistic Era

The first sentence is easy to understand. We only have one body, and our needs for clothing, food, and space to move and survive are limited. But in the latter sentence, the author mentions that “to show off with material resources is self-inflicted”, which can’t make people wake up for a while. In subsequent chapters, the author elaborates on and analyzes this idea:

“After crossing the subsistence line, great material abundance does not necessarily bring people happiness; excessive consumption also brings them trouble and discomfort. For example, eating too much can cause obesity and disease; excessive housing increases the burden of cleaning; and for most people, possessing more material resources means doing more work and labor, which they may not love, so income is often a reward for doing unpleasant things. When it comes down to the basics, wealth is something entirely new in the world of living things, and we have not yet evolved the instincts to deal with it. –from The Post-Materialistic Age

The authors argue that the human desire for resources comes from an evolutionary crisis made by prolonged starvation – when we were monkeys, we could not be assured of three meals a day as we are now, so we needed to hoard food, and when a species solves the problem of food and shelter, it has not developed the appropriate mechanisms to help humans adapt to life after sustenance:

“When this range is not reached, instinct drives us to strive for material resources that match our modest enjoyment. When this range is exceeded, there is no instinct that drives us to return to the “moderate range. –from “The Post-Material Age

“Because resource scarcity is the norm in the biological world, no species can frequently over-consume, and so natural selection cannot be expected to filter out such instincts. — From “The Post-Materialistic Era

Although the author does not mention whether future humans will develop such a mechanism, and whether those who “over-consume resources” will be eliminated by biological evolution – this question is too long ago for any of us to see that day, just as those monkeys could not see us today.

However, the human race has begun to wake up, and some people have begun to realize the sense of crisis caused by the accumulation of excessive goods in their lives, which has nothing to do with poverty, on the contrary, poverty makes people full of a sense of crisis, so they will be addicted to hoarding, such as a variety of promotions, fearing that there is no store after this village, mask socks aunt towels to hoard enough for a year, afraid of expensive back after “can not afford to buy “The The rich do not have this sense of crisis, they can always use anytime to buy.

So the concept of “consumer downgrade” is proposed not only because of the current stage of the entire society’s economic depression (economic issues I really do not understand but everyone says so), but also because people are gradually awakening from the madness of materialism – we do not need so many things, but also can live well, and will live better.

There is another important point that most people do not realize – over-consumption, hoarding items that you are far from being able to consume yourself, is not only a waste of your own money, but also a waste of resources for society as a whole, and the pollution of air and water caused by the production of these items needs to be managed at greater cost. Most fast-moving products have a shelf life, skin care products can only be thrown away after the expiration date, you hoard a hundred face masks (well, I’m talking about myself as a hot chicken), the real use to only fifty, the remaining fifty to the expiration date, was thrown away, the original can be used to turn things into garbage, the more you use more items, will create more and more garbage.

In fact, the “consumer downgrade” in this industry, I am engaged in a serious setback – e-commerce, from the industry point of view, of course, we hope that the more users buy the better, a variety of means, a variety of ways to lure users to pay more, the more you buy the happier we are, but if the pattern is larger, a little longer-term vision, you will perceive Sense of crisis – people began to examine their own desires, no longer need too many items, consumerism brainwashing is no longer enough to impress the user, but will make them resentful, now people’s pain point is no longer material desires can not be satisfied, but by the complicated information oppression nerve, has gradually begun to give up double 11 and a variety of “shopping festival”, although This is a very small number of people, but they are also the first to awaken.

I have a scientifically irresponsible and extremely unprofessional and no data to support the prediction:

The future of life, all kinds of consumer nodes will gradually decline, more and more people will give up double 11, Black Friday to grab goods, but choose to buy directly when needed without regard to price, people may no longer need to shop to fill the void. Of course it can’t be now.

There is no value that is constant. In the 1950s, when there were many things to be done, society needed people to be frugal and proud of it. After the reform and opening up, the difference between the rich and the poor is increasing, and the first group of poor people need some goods to distinguish themselves from the poor who are not first rich, people’s material desires began to be awakened or released from their cages.

In these years, after the rise of the Internet e-commerce industry and the emergence of the Haitao platform, it is no longer very difficult for the poor to buy luxury goods, they can afford it even if they grit their teeth. Because her economic conditions determine that she can enjoy this level of consumption, even if she wears a 19.9 package of T-shirts, people who do not dare to slacken her still do not dare to slacken.

The so-called “consumption downgrade” is actually to adjust the abnormal shopping desire and possessiveness to a normal state, not necessarily to tighten the belt and save money, but to cool down, the pursuit of quality is greater than quantity. After you start to implement the “consumption downgrade” lifestyle, you will find that your life is not lower in quality, but higher in happiness, because you have rejected the impulsive consumption of those items that do not have any meaning. In the process of “downgrading”, you can downgrade the quantity and desire, and upgrade the quality.

In the process of “downgrading consumption”, you also need to consider the cost of time, such as taking a long bus ride to a cheaper place to buy food, something that is not worth the loss for young people: first of all, for young people, time is more precious than money. Secondly, according to unscientific no experiments simply from my side of the case study found that in order to save money and go to a farther buy things often buy back more items than planned – always feel that it is not easy to come once, buy more back to hoard it, a week you eat three pounds of oranges, expensive fruit stalls in front of home you may only buy three pounds, one price is not Temptation, two, anyway, in front of home to eat and then come to buy, but if you take a car to a more distant fruit stall selling oranges, you may buy five pounds, in fact, your appetite for only three pounds, eat three pounds when you feel very happy, neither more nor less, eat to four pounds when you are a little tired, eat to four and a half pounds when you find that one or two of them have rotten. In fact, you enjoy the happiness, and eat three pounds of oranges is as much, because beyond the one and a half pounds does not make you feel happy, or your threshold of happiness is decreasing, and half a pound rotten.

Don’t see “consumption downgrade” as something so painful. Since this idea has now appeared in society and become the pursuit of some people, it means that this practice is more beneficial than harmful, and it is human instinct to avoid harm.

Finally, “consumer upgrade” and “consumer downgrade” from a rational point of view, are educating people to live a more suitable life, but most people’s understanding of “consumer upgrade” is to buy expensive, the understanding of “consumer downgrade” is to buy cheap, upgrade to mainstream values is, the monthly salary of 5,000 white-collar workers with lamer, downgrade to mainstream values, the monthly salary of 10,000 to 20,000 white-collar workers to buy bad apples This is not only absurd in the extreme, but also a distortion of the concept, but still, I think “consumer downgrade” is in a sense a service for “consumer upgrade”, and the two are not incompatible, but two sides of the same coin.