Spent - Miller

After reading “Spent.  Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior”, by Geoffrey Miller only a few weeks before Christmas I have to say that I am spent.  But not in the sense Miller uses the term; although I have to admit I’m not sure how exactly Miller is using the term.  It was a tough read and my mind is tired.  Why?  Because Miller is adept at having us believe he has something important to tell us, but also a master of never quite telling us what that might be.  So he tells us a lot of things, and in truth a lot of the things he tells us are really quite interesting (see below).   Miller is clearly a very smart man and well read.  This book springs from hundreds of others.  Miller spent (there’s that word again) a decade perhaps researching and compiling his thoughts for this book, the illusion is one of hard science and fact, to which he brings us the universal theory of all consumer behavior.  We buy things because we are like a peacock, we evolved to signal something to the world around us, whatever that may be...health, status, intellect, etc.  

Although he goes to great length to tell us why we signal, what we signal, and where the signaling comes from his overwhelming tone seems to be that there is something inherently wrong with this, with us, because we manifest our colors by purchasing commercial goods and services as consumers and not signaling using old fashioned face to face communication, the more human communication of the cave man, with other’s of our species. But then he tells us it’s not really wrong, it’s just wrong because we should be buying used clothes instead of new clothes, because if want to buy Armani shirts to impress women, better to spend $5 dollars in a second hand store than $100 dollars at the Galleria.  The signaling is the same, whether we are really buying the shirts because we like quality and good fit, or because we want to display to others that we are something we may not be, which is rich.  But what if we really are rich?  Can we still buy that Armani shirt at Nordstroms?

This book could be sold as a freshman introductory text on evolutionary psychology using consumer behavior as a case study but Miller didn’t stop in time.  He continued into a rage against consumerism, materialism, the capitalist consumer culture of the United States, and all that is wrong with our superficial and what he calls centrifugal souls.  We are a shallow people us Americans, and if you didn’t know that, the rest of the world knows that all this country really is, is a coast to coast strip mall.  It’s a shame that such a bright man has such jaded view of our culture.  We, as Americans, are far more than the valley girl shopper’s that he thinks we are, if only he would leave his academic perch and come have one of his caveman conversations with us as individuals, what he would find is that “we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention [analogy for reading his book] for whatever it is that we did wrong.  But we think [he is] crazy to make us write an essay telling [him] who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is . . .a brain.  And an athlete.  And a basket case.  A princess.  And a criminal. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours, 

The Breakfast Club

As promised above, a truly interesting idea:  Colleges and universities dismiss the notion of IQ as being a true indicator of intelligence but go to great lengths to only recruit those with high IQ so that they can market a diploma from their institution as the true measure of intelligence.