Intuitive Consumption

Announcing that navigating intuitively through the consumer-jungle is the most rational and sensible way to behave might sound rather odd. However, sensible behavior and deep, profound insights often occur on the basis of intuition (as discussed in this article).

Whenever I buy something, I have noticed that I often intuitively and immediately know what I want. Knowing our preferences, knowing what aesthetically nourishes us, and knowing our needs are crucial elements when investing rather than irrationally shopping. And this is where intuition comes into the picture again. Intuition is our authentic voice.

Navigating the world intuitively is not the equivalent of navigating it irrationally. Intuitive reasoning based on phenomenology is more than an irrational gut feeling; it is a pre-rational, pre-lingual approach to the world that allows us to enter without our rational filters immediately setting in. Being based on phenomenology, the pre-rational approach is linked to our senses or our bodily interaction and engagement with our physical surroundings.

A good example of a pre-rational experience is a déjà-vu experience: You can be walking down the road minding your own business, saying hello to a few people, looking a shop windows, and then suddenly the sunlight reflects beautifully in one of the windows, and everything is lit up and you feel like you have experienced this exact scenario before. What happens is, according to phenomenology, that our body — or our senses and bodily alertness — is way ahead of our rational mind. Once the mind gets there the body has already been there and has already had the experience, pre-rationally. Déjà-vu experiences are therefore a sign of the mind’s post-bodily, rational confusion.

In order to move beyond a rational understanding of our needs and preferences, we must tune into our intuitive compass and allow it to guide us.

You can easily rationalize your way to convincing yourself that you really do need that trendy jacket or that new excess sofa; because you’ve worked so hard earning your money, and so you are allowed to spoil yourself by buying something; or because you can always use an extra sofa for when you have people over, and if you get tired of it you can just sell it on a secondhand online forum.

Ironically, in that sense, rationalizing seems to become an excuse for irrational consumption, and consequently overconsumption.

Rationalizing is not always the most sensible—or sustainable—way to navigate through the world then. On the other hand, when we seek to invest in long-lasting products that will serve us well for many years and nourish our senses on a daily basis, making use of our intuition could be very beneficial. Invest in the objects with which you feel an instant connection based on aesthetics; these tend to last the longest and resonate with the core of your longings and desires.

Marcel Proust (1871–1922) describes this sensation in his seminal work In Search of Lost Time:

“In fact, she could never resign herself to buying anything from which one could not derive an intellectual profit, and especially that which beautiful things afford us by teaching us to seek our pleasure elsewhere than in the satisfactions of material comfort and vanity. Even when she had to make someone a present of the kind called “useful,” when she had to give an armchair, silverware, a walking stick, she looked for “old” ones, as though, now that long desuetude had effaced their character of useful- ness, they would appear more disposed to tell us about the life of people of other times than to serve the needs of our own life.”

This Proust quote highlights something important about my praise of intuitive investments as an antithesis to irrational shopping: aesthetically nourishing things can satisfy and fill us up in a way that isn’t rational and that isn’t founded on comfort or the fulfilling of our functional needs. The most sustainable object might be an object that is charged with stories, emotions, and tracks of usage. It might be an object that aesthetically pleases you every time you use it or look at it, because of its “ability” to beautify your life or surroundings.

In order to reach an understanding of your authentic needs, and aligning these with a more sustainable lifestyle founded in durable product investments and nourishing aesthetic experiences, the phenomenological process of eidetic reduction might be beneficial. An eidetic reduction of your needs and preferences can be valuable in order to avoid irrational shopping and to be able to intuitively tune into what really works for you and nourishes your senses.

The process of eidetic reduction involves peeling off layers of a phenomenon until finally grasping the core of it. And in relation to the longevity and sustainability of the things you hold on to, beneficial questions to ask yourself could be: Which things have you kept for many years? Which garments, pieces of furniture, vases, pots, glasses, etc.? Is there an aesthetic link between them? Are there colors or color combinations that nourish you specifically well? Do you have tactile preferences? Do you, for example, like rough textures, handmade items, material combinations, or do you prefer even surfaces and smooth materials? Or more specifically, which materials are the pieces of furniture that you have held on to throughout the years made of? What about your wardrobe? Is there a fit and a look that you return to again and again that always works for you?

In the eidetic process you seek commons between observed phenomena or objects and based on that you draw conclusions regarding their core and act accordingly.

Interlinked with the intuitive part of conscious consumption or usage there is something significant that I feel important to emphasize: Let’s not forget the pleasure of being attracted to a beautiful, intriguing object and acquiring it. This can be a deeply nourishing act. Investing in aesthetically nourishing, emotionally captivating, functional objects that can beautify and enhance or perhaps improve or simplify our lives and homes is both enriching and edifying.

It is important for me to make it clear that I am not suggesting nihilistic refusal of any physical attachment to the world, but rather, conscious reduction. As French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir equitably puts it:

“There is no way for man to escape this world. It is in this world that he must realize himself morally”.

Overconsumption and a buy-and-throw-away mentality is at the one end of the scale of the golden mean, whereas nihilistic refusal and turning away from society altogether is at the other end. We need to find a balance in our consumption or usage of things. We need to seek durable permanence. We need objects that can satisfy our inherent need for beauty and aesthetic nourishment in a sustainable manner.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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