You really want to need this
About 36 hours after this column first appears, many Americans will be gearing up for Christmas. That is, they will be champing at the bit outside Walmart, eagerly awaiting their chance to tromp underfoot senior citizen greeters in a vain attempt to find the perfect Christmas gift.
That’s because for the first time, Walmart – joined by Macy’s, JC Penney and Kohl’s – will open doors to shoppers at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Much has been written and broadcast bemoaning the American penchant for rushing the Christmas season and seeking bigger and more expensive gifts, so I’m not going to belabor the subject. To do so would be merely beating a dead horse – probably old Dobbin, who on the way over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house was run over by a Cadillac Escalade loaded with people trying to get to Walmart before 6.
But look – it should be obvious that no one “needs” a 76-inch flat-screen TV. No one “needs” the entire line of “Duck Dynasty”-related merchandise spewing forth into Walmart aisles like 20 pounds of stuffing crammed into a 10-pound turkey. And chances are that, even if you get the things you crave most, you won’t be satisfied.
I learned this from “The Paradox of Choice,” by Barry Schwartz, who argues that rather than assuring we will be satisfied with our purchases, an infinite variety of choices in the marketplace causes us to have unreasonably high expectations and second-guess our decisions even before we make them.
Remember when shopping for blue jeans took 10 minutes because there was only one type available, Schwartz asks? Now that we have a seemingly endless variety of jeans from which to choose, it can take an hour to buy a single pair. And after we get home, we become unhappy with the way they fit, or look. We blame ourselves for making the wrong choice. Schwartz argues that having too many choices paralyzes not only in shopping, but in making everyday decisions throughout our lives – such as where to live, what job to take and even who to marry.
Makes sense to me, and the difference between a want and a need seems like something we should learn in elementary school. Here’s how the website “Social Studies for Kids” explains it in an article called “Want vs. Need: Basic Economics”:
“A need is … something you can’t do without. A good example is food. If you don’t eat, you won’t survive for long. … A want is something you would like to have. It is not absolutely necessary, but it would be a good thing to have. A good example is music. Now, some people might argue that music is a need because they think they can’t do without it. But you don’t need music to survive. You do need to eat.”
This is the same logic I tried on my 12th-grade economics teacher, who told me on the first day of my senior year that I needed a haircut because my hair hung over my shirt collar in the back. “No,” I said. “You want me to have haircut; I don’t need to get one.”
Unassailable logic. Still, I got a haircut.
I didn’t want one, didn’t need one. But I needed to graduate.