I must admit that “Consumed” was probably my least favorite
book this year, for several different reasons. I was also relieved to observe
today in our discussion that I was not alone in my feelings of confusion and
frustration towards Barber and his book, “Consumed.” Overall, I feel that where
Barber went wrong was when he went off on his first tangent at the very
beginning of the book.
To be fair, Barber did make several
very interesting points. For example, I found his chapter, “Infantilizing Consumers:
The Coming of Kidults” to be fascinating. I have to say, I witness many of my
peers falling prey to the common childish want of easy over hard. As Barber
explains, adults achieve fluency, or “the seeming ease that comes with
extensive learning, effort, and discipline” by choosing hard over easy (Barber
84). However, children (as well as the emerging kidults) are more frequently
choosing easy over hard, and therefore lack fluency. My sister is a perfect
example. Many times, especially when we were younger and the two year age gap
made a bigger difference, Ruth would see me do something that I had practiced
for a long time, assume it was easy, and try to do that activity. This course
of events would be fine, if she didn’t have the mind set that the activity would
be easy. After failing her first attempt, she would immediately give up. This
behavior is not just a pattern in my sister, rather one that I witness in a lot
of people around me.
I also enjoyed Barber’s use of
psychologists such as Freud and Erik Erikson in his description on the proper
maturation into adults, as well as the improper way in which adults are
maturing today. As Freud theorized, and as Barber summarizes “infantile
behavior is a consequence of a regressive process that offers itself as a defense
against intimidating adult dilemmas with which a disordered ego is unable to
contend” (Barber 34). I have always found Freud to be a fascinating (yet
sometimes disturbing) psychologist, and I loved the way that Barber connected
Freud’s idea of regression as a result of adults not being able to handle being
consumers.
However, my biggest issue with this
book is the fact that many of Barber’s points lack depth. This last point that
I discussed, for example, is discussed for a few paragraphs, and then Barber quickly
segues into another tangent. Although these tangents are at times equally
interesting as the one Barber was previously on, his jumping from one point to
the other still detracts from each of his statements. As he moves from tangent
to tangent, Barber neglects to really finish any of his trains of thought by
going fully in depth.
As I discussed in class, it seems
that the several tangents allowed for the temporary appeasement of everyone by
giving us each something that we related to and could enjoy. However, in doing
this, Barber managed to annoy all of us by only briefly mentioning that which
we each felt was interesting and deserved more attention.
