Yay Puritans! Boo witches!

I’m halfway through my second year of college, and instead of that being a moment of respite for memories and forward-bound ponderings, I’m left preparing for a massive midterm on the history of television.

We’re going to have a minor multiple choice question, but one small guy of fifty, about the shift of our nation from being production-oriented to consumption-oriented. Now this plays into television a little, but I’m most interested in these lists my teacher gave us identifying both types of cultures, and the transition that was made back at the turn of the century (19th-20th… because I guess technically we just passed another century turn…). More simply put, the transition between a society of work ethics to a Hedonistic (pleasure-seeking) society.

So without further ado and without further mumblings, here were the two lists.

The motivational basis in production-oriented Capitalism:

• Industriousness
• Sobriety
• Discipline
• Deferred gratification
• Individual, family, and community are of equal importance
• Frugality
• Chastity
• Respect for authority
• Continuity over change

And here’s the motivations in consumption-oriented Capitalism:

• Recreation over work
• Indulgence over sobriety
• Casualness over discipline
• Instant versus deferred gratification
• Individual over the family and community
• Spending over saving
• Sexuality over chastity
• Individuality over authority
• Change over continuity

This supposedly happened when we started getting more money and consuming more… For example, the “instant versus deferred gratification” point is illustrated in a lot of early television, where in earlier decades people saved up until they could buy the TV/Car/Mail-order Bride in one lump sum, this new mindset is to use the installment plan, so you can buy a lot of things at once and get in debt real fast-like! The wives are all gung-ho about gettin’ the newest TV sets and the husbands are all like, “The heck? I just got you a dern radio! I’m not made of silver dollars!” and then the wives get all mopey and the laugh track sounds… television was really awful sometimes. Not that it’s much better now…

So, when I look at those lists, I can’t help but thinking my parents versus me, and the generation I belong to. And from there, I can’t help but thinking all these things my parents experience with the 60s, going against their staunch, inflexible, hard-working parents of the Great Depression era. It also seems biased because the first list has attributes that are generally positive (who doesn’t want to be INDUSTRIOUS), and the bottom list has generally negative (CASUALNESS? RECREATION? You slackers).

Then I think about the obvious points on that list, like of course Capitalism wants you to spend instead of save. They make more money advertising with sexually explicit ads that promise sexually explicit lifestyles than ads promising long-lasting, slow-moving, plate tectonic-esque relationships.

I see the point my professor was making, but I realized I started taking this to a personal level and trying to see which list I had more qualities from, and I fell in the middle. I’m deferring gratification by saving up money for a new camera… but I’m not very disciplined (I finished the Simpsons Season 8 in only five days!), and I definitely put individuality over authority. It is not to say that I’m torn up over not being able to put myself firmly in either category, it’s just interesting that the consumption-oriented side seems so evil compared to the holy Puritanic work ethic.

How do you guys fall into those lists?