The sustainable couch, that is. You’ve heard of conspicuous consumption, the idea put forward in Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class that people buy and use certain goods to demonstrate their wealth. The Journal’s Joseph Rago has hit upon a new wrinkle: conspicuous virtue:
A trip to the supermarket is instructive. For some time, everyday food has groaned with every sort of moral sentiment: all-natural, sustainable, cage-free, free-range, organic, organic, organic. Foods like these are more than mere sustenance: They commodify values, making them real—material—in the world. They are virtuous goods. To consume a virtuous good is to make a statement. It is not only to do right, whatever that might mean, but to announce that you are doing so.
Thus we encounter the extreme specialization of virtuous consumption. Upscale boutique grocers like Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s base their identities (and marketing strategies) on giving people a way to eat so that each of us may demonstrate where we rank in the virtue standings. The “holistic thinking” of Whole Foods Market, for instance, could not be fully expressed in a “vision statement,” so the store is governed by a posted “declaration of interdependence” as well. Trader Joe’s actually makes a point of advertising that it does not kill baby seals in the procurement of seafood.
Such consumption becomes more and more specialized and, presumably, rare: This newspaper recently reported that furniture designers are producing couches and chairs upholstered with “organic or sustainable leather,” meaning leather made “from free-range cattle that is treated with vegetable dyes and isn’t processed with heavy metals.”
I once saw a bumper sticker that read, “Character is what you do when no one’s looking.” A fine sentiment, poised as it is against the impulse to trumpet one’s every act of charity or “eco-consciousness.” Of course, putting said fine sentiment on your bumper is a handy way of suggesting the many virtuous things you do while no one’s looking, which kind of defeats the purpose.
In simpler times, religious folks were virtuous (in their behavior if not in their choice of automobiles) because they believed God was watching. Do those who practice today’s secular virtues believe that their fellow men are watching? Or is all their Toyota Piety and free-range furniture really just meant to propitiate the god called Narcissus?
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