Can a good life contain consumption?
There is a certain prominent picture, a picture of healthy engagement, on websites like Substack. According to it, there is a bad thing we can do: we can consume. This is normally presented in the context of content. Our crime, thus, is that we consume content, mindlessly.
An image of someone scrolling on Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts or TikTok comes to mind.
On a view like this, consumption sits in opposition to something more active, in our case, creation. The thought goes, we are better off making something, doing something, putting together ideas, piecing together a story.
And, as weird as it is to say, I think something like this is what underlies a lot of ideas that we run across on the internet, especially in areas that focus on productivity. There’s a sense that if one is scrolling or procrastinating or consuming, she is wasting her time precisely because she could be doing something better with it. She could be making something. She could be doing something more active. That is the sense in which she misses out, and that is the sense in which scrolling on TikTok is a harm.
So: scrolling on TikTok, procrastinating, all of these things are harms because they prevent us from engaging in their more active counterparts. Rather than scroll on TikToks, I could be making something. Rather than procrastinate, I could get started on my work. And so, consumption is contrasted with creation, and we leave with a sense that if we're consuming, we're making some sort of mistake. Instead, we must turn our heads to the page, grab a pencil, touch the keyboard, and get to work.
Now, there's an obvious sense in which this is wrong. We might wonder whether there's a difference or what the difference is between making a brain rot TikTok and consuming one. Yes, perhaps there is some value that comes from creating one, but it isn't as if simply transitioning from consuming to creating is enough to redeem an activity.
Convince yourself of this. Ask: If all we did was make brain rot TikToks, how much better off would we be from consuming them – or, perhaps, we might put it this way: is not a person who does nothing but make these TikToks missing precisely the same kind of value in their lives that the person who simply scrolls is missing? The mere switch to creation is not enough to satisfy that need.
The scene is further complicated when we consider the fact that not all consumption is bad. In fact, to a certain extent, consumption is deeply important. And it's worth breaking apart the two different senses in which it is important.
Instrumentally
It is a chestnut of writing advice that if one aspires to be a better writer, she can either practice and hope that practice makes perfect, or she can read other writers. More plainly, a great way to write better, to create better, is to consume and appreciate and enjoy and toil over the creations of other people.
Philosophy offers a particularly sharp example of this. If one wants to write philosophy well, if one wants to be understood by other philosophers, then she will need to begin not by creating her own theory from scratch and writing in a style that makes perfect sense to her but not to anyone else, no, what she must do is: read. Read old thinkers, and new ones alike. And in doing so she will pick things up. She'll learn about style, about how to ask questions – about which questions are worth asking, and which ones aren't. Eventually, of course, she'll challenge some of these norms. She might transgress them, even. Yet, to start, it is important that she begins by observing them, by getting a sense for them. And that requires that she do more than create, she must, for some time, consume.Non-Instrumentally
It is also quite clear – again sticking with the philosophy example – that engaging with the ideas of others, their writing styles, is an inherently valuable experience beyond any potential benefits to a writer. Even if one doesn't wish to write herself, simply reading Plato or Proust or Kant or other thinkers can and should (Note: I am not saying you must enjoy Kant! I would never say such a thing :)) be deeply rewarding on its own.
One way of making this vivid is to consider the respect that one feels towards someone with a big library full of books that have clearly been read over and over again. Worn spines, margins filled with scribbled comments. Such an environment is not only aesthetically pleasing, but is the expression of a kind of intellectual virtue. And so we ought to avoid any conclusion which suggests that such a person is engaging in some morally or intellectually or psychologically objectionable consumption.
So, we've arrived at an unsurprising conclusion, one that seems, now, too obvious to even be called a conclusion: Not all consumption is bad, and though I have so far kept my examples confined to reading, it isn't as if there's anything exciting or exclusive or special about reading words or scribbles on a page. We might then say the same thing about words or scribbles on an e-ink screen, and then maybe, maybe, even an LCD screen. And, again, there's nothing special about words. We might say the same things about music, and all the other senses.
But as obvious as this seems, it leaves us with a question. What were we talking about at first? Why do we feel that consumption of content is icky? What's doing the work?
Forgive me, reader, I'm sure you're facepalming. There's an obvious answer which suggests itself at this point in our inquiry. Some forms of consumption are mindless. The content that is acceptable to consume, philosophy (an example, but surely not the only acceptable kind of content to consume!), works of Proust or Plato or whoever, are the opposite of mindless. They require thought. They engage our intellectual organs. And so when someone criticizes consumption, they're not criticizing consumption per se. They're criticizing consumption of thoughtless or mindless content.
But now I must ask, in what sense is consuming mindless content “bad”? Must we, or is it really desirable that we think about or read philosophy, poetry, or what have you, every second of every day? Yes, one who did so would surely be doing quite well intellectually, but they would also be missing something. We cannot think only about logic or reason. We cannot be deducing things every second of every day. To do so is to leave no space in the day for the rest of a life.
I am being too abstract. Here is my question. What is so bad about putting on a funny YouTube video in the background while one gets some work done? Or, perhaps, tuning in to some mindless TV show? For me, my greatest weakness is currently Singles Inferno.
And reader, I hear you. When one consumes such things, they perhaps are avoiding silence, avoiding boredom. But, at least from my position, it simply cannot be that life contains only enough space to read and sit in silence. And, further, though shows like Singles Inferno can be ways or methods of avoiding silence, they need not only be that. When one simply turns on Netflix, she need not be thinking about silence whatsoever.
But though I say this, at the same time I feel strongly, certainly while watching a show like Singles Inferno, that what I'm doing is weird. That the content I'm consuming is weird. That I could be doing better things with my time. That I'd be better off without it.
I must counter that too, however, because if I really felt so strongly that I'd be better off without it, I must then ask, why do I continue consuming it? And yes, one answer is that there's some kind of addiction here, that I can't but consume it. Yet this is not the entire picture. Or it need not be. Here's another interpretation. One that, at least in my own case, but maybe not in yours, reader, feels accurate.
It begins like this: I feel a sort of guilt. I feel that I should be productive all of the time. Yet, of course, this is a fantasy. No one can be productive all of the time. But rather than give up this fantasy, I cling to it. I imagine that I could give up scrolling if I wanted to, yet that I simply lack the will to do so. And this white lie allows me to maintain that I have the capacity to be purely intellectual, to be purely productive. If only I would finally stand up for my time – it allows me to maintain – I could stop wasting it.
And I think it's best to close by holding this guilt, this feeling that I could stop wasting my time, that, if I wished, I could be purely productive, up to a microscope. Namely, we must ask, is time spent doomscrolling or watching Singles Inferno time wasted?
I suggest we will find that this question can only be answered in the context of a specific case.
Is there something that I must do? Do I have a deadline? And, crucially: am I doom-scrolling or watching Singles Inferno in order to avoid meeting that deadline? If so, in such a case, the time certainly is wasted.
However, other cases are not so clear. Imagine: I have 15 minutes to kill. My friend is on the way. Yes, I could read Kant in that time. But need I? Am I making a mistake if I do not? The claim that I hope to deny is even stronger than that. If I forego Kant, if I put on some silly YouTube video of people driving their cars poorly, I do not think that I need to be understood as wasting my time. I am watching a YouTube video, that is all there is to it.
The scope of consumption, then, is greater than we might have initially thought. In fact, we consume all sorts of good things. We consume music, literature, poetry, film, and maybe even Singles Inferno. And the scope of bad consumption is intriguingly hard to specify. For an investigation, that is an exciting enough conclusion.