1 Introduction and Structure of the Article

1Since 1996 the slogan “Using not owning”1 has been valid in Germany as one guiding principle for the development and advancement of strategies for the sustainable use of products. Even if the slogan is legally not completely accurate (the relation of possession to ownership), it reminds us that the use of objects – and not their purchase – constitutes the true benefit of a good. That means that in order to use goods it is not really necessary to buy them. Renting, lending, sharing, upgrading, repairing, etc. goods are not new but very effective strategies for conserving resources.2 The common aim of these strategies is to substitute the purchase (and with that the production) of new goods, either by services that accompany ownership (life extending) or that substitute ownership (intensifying use). In the first case ownership by the user of a product is a prerequisite; in the latter the owner has to forgo ownership of the good (and only pay for its function).

2Many successful examples have led to the increasing dissemination of these strategies, most of all in the commercial-industrial domain (cf. Fleig 2000; Hübner et al. 2007; Reisinger/Krammer 2007; Stahel 2004). In the area of private consumption, however, the economic (and with this also the ecological) success largely lags behind the expectations. Why is that so? How can one explain the relative disinterest of consumers in long-lasting goods and services like repairing, upgrading, and maintaining (“caring strategies”) and likewise in lending/borrowing, renting, sharing (“sharing strategies”), even if these offers provide many advantages to the user, as they are mostly more cost-effective, more reliable, and save on the effort of maintenance and disposal?

3Before new concepts and further product-service systems are developed, it must first be acknowledged that many of the offers of product services which up till now have been understood as sustainable are not suitable for the masses – at least not under the given conditions in rich, westernized, industrial countries. This statement again leads to the basic question of why is that so? Motives that go beyond standard economic thinking, together with findings from various disciplines must be included in such an analysis, with different approaches being conceivable. On the basis that objects in general use and objects of everyday life serve the ongoing genesis and design of identity in a manner so far underestimated by research in general, the present text examines the connection between everyday objects and the process of individuation.

4This article is thus based on two hypotheses: first, material goods fundamentally influence human processes of individuation; second, ownership and individuation are so closely co-dependent that concepts which facilitate usage without acquisition of ownership have less effect the more social importance is given to individual personal development. This is shown when a colleague from the business administration sciences supposes that “ownership cannot be cracked by us” (“Eigentum ist für uns nicht zu knacken”; Paech 2007, oral presentation). Based on specific research results he concludes that “even highly efficient, ownership-substituting services lack cultural compatibility”. Different qualities of use seem to exist, depending on whether one is the owner or not. But how is that to be understood? Is in our Western civilizations having (following Erich Fromm) more important than using? Or is buying/purchasing even more important than having and using combined?

5Therefore the aim of this article is to consider how, i. e. with which strategies or concepts, the development of personality is dependent on or is made dependent on goods. In this four key strategies are discerned: Individuation through production, individuation through use or usage, individuation through purchase (shopping/consumerism), and individuation through ownership. Why is it important to consider such basic ideas? If, with regard to sustainable development, it is necessary to reduce the use of resources absolutely, the way in which goods are handled must be changed drastically. To do so the roots of all activity with goods must be uncovered: What is the role of goods for the self, for the identity of a person, and what are the contexts? What causes the magic of objects or commodities (cf. Hübner 2010), this magic attraction towards goods? Finally, these four strategies are considered in connection with the present economic system which in order to show why the very buying is becoming increasingly important for the maintenance of the system.

2 Individuation – Prerequisites and Processes in the Development of Identity

6It is clear that many goods can be used without being “owned”, without the user being the owner. It is also clear that goods will need to be repaired if, as the owner, you hope to be able to use them for longer. Here two central concepts which govern our use of goods are addressed: possession (in the sense of rightful occupancy) and ownership, whereby the institution of ownership goes far beyond the right to use something. The logical consequence of this is that material goods have a meaning which also goes far beyond the “pure” functions of their purpose and use. The present text, however, is not intended as a treatise of these legal differences (for more on this see Hübner et al. 2005, p. 67; Hübner et al. 2007, p. 65). Rather the central linguistic element, namely the term ownership is of interest, containing as it does the word “own”, pointing to something of one’s own, a self, to acquisition, to something special (e. g. idiosyncratic). What has it to do with this “one’s own”, this property, with a self and with one’s identity, and what contribution does our use of goods and of objects make to this self, to its perception, to its development? How can this need, which transcends our use of goods, be captured or grasped? And how – vice versa – can that meaning of goods be explained that goes beyond the practical function of how they are used? Why is it important for more and more individuals to acquire as many goods as possible, to “have” them for oneself in Fromm’s sense? Which role does ownership of goods play; especially when there is less and less time to use these goods? Or is it the other way round? Do we have to “have” everything ourselves, because time is increasingly scarce?

7In the wealthy societies of the so-called Western world, i. e. in societies in which a reasonably large number of their members manage to satisfy their basic needs with relatively little effort, goods are certainly endowed with a meaning or function that goes beyond basic provision. Instead of the welfare of society in general that of the individual and its free development comes increasingly to the fore. What meaning do goods have and what role do they play in this context? In order to understand the present, demonstrably unsustainable patterns in which material goods are (being) used, and also to be able to change these, we have to analyze how goods, as material objects, have contributed or (can) contribute to individuation, to the development of people’s personalities.

2.1 The Right to Free Development of the Personality

8The term individuation can be traced from Latin (individuus = not dividable) and simply means “to make oneself indivisible/undividable”. The psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung introduced this term to psychology with the meaning “become a single being, and, insofar as under individuality we understand our innermost, last and incomparable singularity, become our own self” (Jung 1933, p. 65). Therefore one could translate “individuation” also as “the genesis and realization of the self”, a path to one’s own whole, a process of becoming a singular being, an individual. One’s own whole again presupposes a self, a self that recognizes itself as an individual and as such is also recognized by others. This process can be conscious or unconscious, controlled or by chance, directed or without direction. The human being is a creature that can think and that has consciousness. One can assume that the genesis, this becoming of the self, happens more or less consciously, not completely by chance and not without direction. For the human being that means that it can influence this process or even actively shape it. But to what extent these processes are set in motion or how they take their course depends not only on the respective individual, but also on the individual’s circumstances or environment. This process is overshadowed by a continual oscillation between necessities and possibilities, the two “forms of despair”, as Søren Kierkegaard describes it in 1849 in his book “The Sickness unto Death”.

9The individual, and with it the becoming of the self, did not have the same meaning in the history of mankind as they have today. There were times, and there are still cultures, in which the collective, and not the individual, was or is the centre of consideration (e. g. Asian cultures, tribal cultures). In European cultures today free personal development is valued most highly. In Germany this is stated explicitly. Article 2, paragraph 1 of the German Constitution guarantees the free development of the personality. This comprehensive right to free development of the personality accords a special role not only to the individual but also to the development of identity within modern society. In a time or culture in which the circumstances not only allow the free development of individuals but also encourage, almost demand it, one becomes so to speak “a task for oneself” (Gross 1999, p. 9). What is special about the human being, what predispositions make it possible for an individual to even think about changing and developing him-or herself?

Predispositions: The Potential for Transcendence – Differentiation towards Oneself

10The prerequisite for the free development of the human being is that the human being is not fixed once and for all, but is able to define him-or herself anew over and over and again. As a being with shortcomings, the human being is by nature neither purely instinctive, nor capable of creating a second nature which solves all problems. Presumably developments of artificial or virtual worlds, like artificial cities (e. g. Las Vegas), artificial worlds (e. g. Disneyworld, Legoland) or virtual parallel worlds (Second Life) do not change anything.3 These missing instincts are seen as natural deficiencies, whereby the human energy (impetus) remains essentially undirected, which makes the human being open, unfinished, and unfinishable – prerequisites for its freedom. Nevertheless, for all their shortcomings, human beings are still part of nature. But the human can interfere with nature, can adapt or resist, even his or her own nature; he or she can set him-or herself apart from nature and their own self. This ability of the human being is a prerequisite for a free development of the personality which he or she owes to a freedom – previously undefined – “a difference of the human being to itself” (Heintel 2007, p. 37). By this Peter Heintel means that predetermined element of the human being which is not nature: the human being can interfere in its processes, influence and change them, strive to make something new. This includes, effectively, interfering again and again in its own being as an object. As such a being of differentiation (cf. Gross 1994; Heintel 2007, p. 37) the human being oscillates repeatedly between reality and potential. Its identity not only is, but continually comes into being, as a process of setting itself apart from, on the one hand, his or her own ego, and on the other, from the other, from that outside him-or herself.

11This potential for transcendency, this capacity of the human being to transcend its being (with its ego), that is to go beyond the limits of its behaviour, its experience and its consciousness, thereby realizing the state beyond these limits, thus becomes the second prerequisite for developing its self. Religion, dreams, desires, visions, identification, and projection are typical phenomena of the potential for transcendence, which therefore play an essential role in the course of the process of individuation.

Challenges: Exploiting the Potential for Transcendence

12Identity as “the one indispensable pole of human thinking and acting” (Stross 1991, pp. 1f.) poses new challenges for the individual, which should be faced knowingly in order that the individual can protect him-or herself from manipulation and projection. The exploitation of the potential for transcendence firstly requires the human being to have the necessary abilities to recognize its own self (e. g. reflection) and secondly the ability to develop this self, i. e. to achieve growth in the maturity of one’s personality (cf. Erikson 1966, p. 123). At the same time reference images or options must be present which point beyond the present being (cf. Fischer et al. 2008, p. 11). These options are to be found, for instance, in:

• role models of social institutions (e. g. gender, hierarchy, family, work, neighborhood, politics, community, clubs, educational systems etc.);
• wishes, visions, dreams based on external influences (e. g. education/training, advertising, peer group, partner, parents, books, idols etc.);
• prevalent qualities of the human being which differentiate it from nature, from animals, i. e. ‘cultural’ qualities (e. g. homo faber, homo ludens, homo oeconomicus, homo sapiens, homo consumens,...);
• transcendental concepts of individual shaping of one’s existence and future (e. g. having or being in Fromm’s terms, or religious notions of the “Beyond”).

13According to Erik H. Erikson, identity would therefore be characterized by the self’s feeling of reality, which has to a large extent been achieved, then needing to be revised repeatedly. The world of images created by the ideal self would, in contrast, be the number of ideal aims to which the self (cf. Erikson 1980, pp. 199f.) aspired but were never fully achievable. Idealized images in the form of the options listed above are radically increasing in comparison to former epochs of human history, as is the imagined probability of their realization.

14We have to thank so-called progress for this increase in the options available and also in the hoped-for likelihood of their realization. How is this to be understood? Thanks to economic and technical progress more and more products can be bought by ever increasing sections of the population. Thanks to social progress, social barriers (e. g. barriers of class or gender, or assignment to a certain social strata) have been overcome. Likewise, notions that one’s role is determined for life have decreased, work and family situations are increasingly rarely once-and-for-all decisions, while ways of life and the opportunities for shaping them are becoming more and more varied. Flexibility in all areas of daily life has become almost a norm. In addition, there is the phenomenon of having more time at one’s disposal: in the so-called affluent or prosperous societies less and less time has to be spent on satisfying basic physical needs than in poor societies. So there is more time in the former for the non-physical, for the transcendental – which, however, can manifest itself in the physical, in so far as it is reflected in mobile, consumerist behaviour. Therefore it is only logical that to the major questions mankind asks itself about its existence (Where from? Where to? Why?), other philosophical questions have been added, which – today – have perhaps greater relevance: Who am I? Who/what do I want to be? Questions then that revolve not around mankind as a species, as a collective, but around the single individual.

2.2 Processes of Individuation

15The conscious search for the self, this process of developing one’s own identity while still remaining identical to oneself is an ambitious challenge which Erikson describes as follows: “In the course of one’s life the ego as an organizing central authority is faced by a changing self, which demands that it be made congruent with all former and future selves” (Erikson 1980, p. 191). The process of individuation, consisting of processes of self-observation, of choosing from options, and of changing the self (cf. Fischer et al. 2008, p. 11) can happen once, several times, or continuously. Under the present circumstances, the human being can answer the questions of “Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” for itself once or several times, and answer differently every time. Individuation comprises the development of one’s own abilities, talents, and opportunities within the context of changing environments. On the one hand, that sounds wonderful. It does, however, constitute an increasing stress factor for many people. The more options for choice there are, the more contradictions make themselves felt between model images, one’s own desires or imaginations, external expectations, between keeping and changing. Thus the process of individuation is affected by balancing contradictions resulting from the following challenges: dissociation from the external world, inner conflict between freedom and security and – as instrument and result – the extent of the physical-material part in the process of individuation.

Frame or Reference: The Tension between the Inner and the Outer

16The human being is part of one or several social systems. Thus the process of individuation always occurs in the field of tension between the two poles of the individual and the collective. Being observed by others and the self’s realization of that fact influence the perception and assessment of one’s own self, and thereby of the process of individuation. As social systems are not static but changing all the time, the collective as a pole of both differentiation and of belonging exists as a constant stimulus/irritant in the course of a person’s individuation. And it is this very pole of the collective which almost logically requires a further question: “How do I want to affect my environment?” (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Self in Tension between Internal and External

17Perhaps this question offers even more scope for development than the previous ones, and is probably of greater relevance in the management of day-to-day living. Alfred Schütz explicitly differentiates between taking action (a term which includes the inner attitude) and “affecting” (having an effect on the external), “the intervention of the self in the universe and in universal time” (Schütz 2003, p. 11). The question of what the effect can be therefore surpasses the question of what is being. In this case the effect on others, on one’s surroundings, on the environment in the broadest sense (the external effect) is more important for an individual than the being (the internal effect). This development of the “social person in the lonely self” (Schütz) is an interplay between the internal and the external, both always existing. The answer to the two questions “What/who do I want to be?” and “How do I want to affect (others)?” thus swings back and forth between the internal and the external, between desires (= wanting, internal) and duties (= obligation, external), and between abilities (= being able to, internal) and basic conditions (= being allowed to, external).

Process: The Tension between Security and Freedom

18The two questions of wanting to be and wanting to affect contain the core notion of wanting. They can only be asked in this way in a society of free individuals which has sufficient physical-material security (welfare). This means it must be possible for the wanting to become reality beyond dreams and wishes. In order to confront the questions of being and affecting the human being must be free of shackles and constraints, and the human being must have overcome the state of being not free (slavery, dictatorships, norms).4 Only then is he or she free for something, free to determine, to develop his or her life and identity themselves. Wanting postulates a need, more even: a free will, freedom. Freedom is therefore not only the human being’s disposition to be able to develop freely, freedom requires a wanting, the will to determine this “vague difference of the human being to itself” (cf. Heintel 2007, p. 37), to develop it, to set parameters itself. Effect depends on having the potential to be seen and grasped, and so comes into being only through the physical-material manifestation of the wanting. Decisions only manifest themselves as physical in their realization, thereby becoming stipulations. This, however, leads to the inner contradiction of freedom: Every realization, every decision (e. g. a decision for academic studies, for a partner, for a career, or for a household appliance) offers a form of security, but at the same time imposes a limitation on one’s freedom. On the other hand, each decision opens up new possibilities, and with these new realizations of freedom, which would not have existed without this decision.

19Thus the process of individuation is strictly speaking a balancing of the freedom paradox,5 the frame of reference being the individual him-or herself.6 The second big field of tension arises through the frame of reference outside the individual, the eternally recurrent decision relating to the collective – where do I want to belong, which groups do I want to differentiate myself from (see Figure 2)?

Figure 2: Tensions in the Process of Individuation

20Finally, it is not only the differentiating oneself (from one’s own self and from nature) and the answers to the questions of wanting to be and wanting to have an effect which belong to the exploitation of the potential for transcendence. A third process is necessary: the transformation process – how do I become what I want to become? How can I achieve that I appear the way I want to appear? The transformation process does not only depend on one’s own, inherent (to one’s self) potential, but – even more than the other two processes – upon the external circumstances and the physical-material possibilities.

The Dimension of Materiality: Tension between the Physical and the Non physical

21Parallel to the physical and non-physical dimensions of the human identity, material and immaterial goods open up the range of possibilities that exists between the physical, material pole, and the non-physical, or metaphysical pole. In the course of the practical realization of the self’s formation and development, another dimension is added to this internal-external frame of reference: the dimension of physical materiality. Effect is achieved only through the inclusion of the body, that is, through visible doing, as the process happens. Schütz describes this as the “enforcement of the pragma in the body movement” (Schütz 2003, p. 11). Thus, the process of individuation always happens in the field of tension between the physical-material pole and the non-physical, immaterial one. Both being and affecting can always be considered as the relative share of the physical-material and the non-physical, immaterial parts (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Tension in the Material Dimension

The physical-material pole

22In order to satisfy its basic needs, that is simply for its “naked” survival, the human being needs material goods – food, and tools to produce it, to transport it, etc. He needs goods to protect himself, to move and to survive in his environment. Through technical and economic progress the ever-increasing and efficient production of more and more complex goods has come about. These do not only serve to satisfy physical needs. To that is added the phenomenon of relief (cf. Hübner 1991, p. 29): The use of many consumer goods makes everyday chores easier and so adds to the physical relief of the human being, thereby in turn releasing further resources, which, admittedly among other things, too, can be used to satisfy non-physical needs.

The non-physical, immaterial pole, also the metaphysical pole

23It is difficult today to believe that the human being is only Physis and thus only “a kind of biochemical soup” (cf. Howanietz/Spohn 1990, p. 11). The mind and the soul of a human being cannot be verified with scientific means, and remain a phantom for many for the present. Yet, a self makes decisions, perceives feelings, and sets goals which go beyond material things and which cannot materially be sufficiently explained and achieved. And thus it seems as if this metaphysical pole of being leads to needs which cannot – or only to a limited extent – be satisfied by physical or consumer goods.

24As will now be explained, material goods, objects, consumer goods, objects of everyday use, all these are not to be assigned solely to the physical pole. Goods thus play an essential, and probably in certain respects underestimated role in how humans’ wanting to be and to affect is expressed.

3 The Dialectics of Objects: The Potential for Identification and Self-expression

25The way we use goods, particularly material goods with a physical presence, is therefore a phenomenon which goes beyond the thing itself, and is thus a socio-cultural phenomenon. It includes more than the simple using of the good, because the good’s potential extends beyond the needs which can be satisfied through using it – and yet it never fulfils all the expectations. As a result, the significance of goods goes far beyond their physical-functional characteristics. This combination of technical (objective) characteristics with the non-physical (subjective) potential – inherent to all goods – for identification and projection is the contribution that goods can make to the process of individuation.

26If one sees humans, as Karl Marx did, as a species which is active in a world of objects, then humans develop in their “active interaction with nature”, this being the principle of dialectic materialism. Consequently goods are the objectification of ideas, which happens not only in the production process but also when the goods are being used and possibly also at the moment of their purchase. These externalizations of the human being, in which the individual can recognize, confirm, and realize him- or herself, will now be analyzed with respect to their contribution to the individuation process.

3.1 Producing Things – Individuation through Production

27Marx regards the productive ability as the basic characteristic of all humans – men and women as productive beings (cf. Liessmann 1999). Realizing one’s own potential in production can however presumably only be achieved if the person producing can experience and control all phases of the production process, up to and including the finished product. Thus production can probably only be relevant for one’s identity if all the production processes take place in one location, require human – perhaps even manual – labor, and can be controlled by the human producer. This, however, is only possible in the case of hand-made goods, which renders it virtually impossible to produce completely identical goods. Hand-made articles are consequently unique, which probably contributes to the identity-generating effect of goods – for the user, too. Manually produced goods usually aim to be long-lasting and repairable, thereby often accompanying the user over many years, and thus often determining his or her everyday life in an unobtrusive fashion, but the more sustainably for that. Certain watchmakers still advertise their products using these characteristics, emphasizing their power of identification on account of their stable, long-lasting values.

28Industrial production looks very different. Increasingly, division of labour leads to the de-centralization of production locations, sometimes across the whole world. Each location specializes in one component or one part of the process, with many of the processes at least partially automated. This allows (and also demands) the production of absolutely identical, standardized goods on a large scale. This leads to prices which make even complex goods affordable for nearly everyone, at least in industrial countries. This has also many ecological and social consequences. Many of the effects of industrial production of goods are known, because they are highly visible or obvious (cf. Hübner 2010, p. 128): traditional social structures are changed, new social groups are added, such as those of the industrial worker, or of the so-called brain worker (e. g. managers, programmers, product developers, designers); resource consumption rises over or out of proportion, making whole regions dependent on one technology, on the production of one good. This becomes particularly evident in times of crisis.

29However, many consequences are less obvious and do not show themselves so openly, creeping in (too slowly to be perceived), or remaining hidden (in the background and therefore hardly noticeable). Among these is the estrangement from goods, which according to Marx is a result of production conditions under capitalism. Mass production by machines offers the self, the individual, hardly any possibility to recognize and realize him-or herself in their entirety in the production of goods, since in reality the good is produced to a large part by another material good (the machine). Work in production increasingly comes to mean operating (in German “serving”) the machines, in place of producing goods. Furthermore, the large numbers of items produced, and the impressive reduction in the time taken to produce an item, hardly gives the individual time to identify with what is produced. Moreover, under these conditions, the individual has hardly any opportunity within the production process to influence the product’s success on the market, while income and wages are largely uncoupled from product type and quality, and, instead of the single product, what counts is large numbers and faultless batches. In contrast to the manual production of goods, which required suitable, product-specific skills, industrial qualifications are largely independent of the type of product: unskilled workers for basic manual tasks, skilled workers to use machinery, management expertise for the most efficient organization of (wo)men and machines and finally marketing experts and designers for the constant development of new products. Sales are left to the traders; again a completely distinct layer in an economic system which practices extreme division of labour and which increasingly demands ever greater marketing and sales expertise than product expertise. In the face of ever shorter innovative cycles, knowing a product well is hardly of practical relevance. Industrial production thus hardly seems to offer – except perhaps for designers and developers – much potential for the self-fulfillment of the individual through producing goods.

3.2 Using Objects – Individuation through Usage

30In usage, in the act of using, “the function of goods realizes itself, where previously, as the result of production, only the potential function was attributed to it” (Ropohl 1999, p. 308). Here we can distinguish between two functional potentials: the substitution and the complementation potentials. Goods can perform certain actions instead of humans (substitution), relieving humans physically and making processes more efficient. Other goods, however, provide new functions which otherwise could not be performed by humans (complementation), thereby enlarging their potential to act.

31Products, goods, and objects serve to satisfy needs, a phenomenon which is purely subjective and therefore highly elusive. An initial approach can be made via the term “provision of gain” (subjective, realising effect) or via the function of goods (objective, intended effect). The gain from goods arises from both functions of goods, the use function and the symbolic function.7 While the usage function signifies the exploitation of the physical-technical potential (substitution or complementation), the symbolic function aims to exploit its non-physical characteristics. The symbolic function is not necessarily connected to the technical functions of a good, arising instead from the knowledge that the consumer has about the product’s characteristics, based on existing (or imagined) knowledge. This real (or artificial) knowledge is produced by companies through information and advertising (cf. Bömmel 2003, p. 94).

32Thanks to technical and economic progress there is a product answer (cf. Heintel 1999, p. 52) for every human need – and also for every contradiction of our needs. The product answers to the five global values – which went global long ago, when globalization became possible – of mobility, flexibility, convenience, security, and hygiene and the needs logically connected with them lead to more and more similar goods worldwide. Similar goods and similar demands on humans also lead to increasingly similar lifestyles, to a monotonizing of the world, as Stefan Zweig already noted in an essay in 1925 (cf. Zweig 1976, p. 7). In order to prevent this monotonizing, this unifying of lifestyles, ever more and newer goods and styles must be produced and distributed. In the face of a vast variety of goods, ever-changing fashions and trends contribute to compensating for the lowering of the basic usefulness of the usage function, by increasing the symbolic value in order to communicate variety and diversity. Those goods are successful which skillfully connect usage and symbolic functions, i. e. goods with high flexibility, mobility, and convenience potential (usage function), but equally high identification and differentiation potential (symbolic function).

33To sum up, in the course of industrialized mass production decreasing opportunities for self-realization in the course of the production of goods have led to consumption (in the original sense of the Latin word consumere, meaning use up or use, not in the present sense of buy) offering itself as an alternative field, as presented in the newer theories of household production: the consumer as an active designer of his or her living circumstances (cf. Bömmel 2003, p. 106).

3.3 Acquiring Things – Individualization through Retail Activity

34Shopping is a form of acquisition. However, the reason for the acquisition of goods seems to have changed: in former times goods were acquired to be used, to be made use of in order to satisfy a need. The use, the application, and the gain were in the foreground. Today, however, in affluent societies shaped by industry “purchasing new articles is necessary in order to guarantee production” (Scherhorn 1997, pp. 29f.). Scherhorn’s formulation is perhaps a little exaggerated, and the individual presumably does not act with that intention in mind. The economic system, in the weave of which almost everybody is involved in some way, ensures, so to speak anonymously and collectively, that retail activity is upheld and “private consumption does not collapse”. Shopping has top priority and works in the interest of sustaining the (established) system of production. Even Austrian advertising slogans like “Stinginess is cool”8 do not call for people to save more or to refuse to go shopping, but overtake the current development in so far as hunting for bargains becomes fashionable, the absolute trend: one does not buy because one needs a good, but because it is so cheap that one would be a “stupid man”9 not to buy at that price!

35The concept behind all this is that of a society dominated by production, one dependent on the selling of goods. Where markets are saturated this can only work if the goods are short-lived, i. e. they go out of date technologically or fashion-wise as fast as possible. New versions of goods supplant former versions which still work, are perhaps better, and usually cheaper than employing upgrade or repair strategies. Disposal and fresh purchase are the logical result. The throw-away good is the ideal good from the point of view of this economic system. In this industrial “Rapid Replacement System” (Giarini/Stahel 2000, p. 100), offering long-lasting products which can be repaired or upgraded has little chance of success. Even long-lasting products are used significantly less or for shorter periods than their technological life would actually allow (e. g. mobile phones, personal computers). “Single products with a short life which can neither be fitted into the system nor be repaired cheaply nor adapted to changes have led to an increasing part of our income being spent firstly on the replacement of (already existing) products – which does not increase our prosperity but only sustains or maintains it – and secondly on the disposal of rapidly growing mountains of refuse, containing ever more complex and poisonous material” in the words of Orio Giarini and Walter R. Stahel (Giarini/Stahel 2000, p. 100). In an age of saturated markets and needs whole sectors of industry are seeking new needs in the interest of their own growth. The attempt is being made to maintain the old pattern of an industrial, social, and economic system “which is dependent on the continuous production of unimportant and quickly obsolete products, and which therefore has no interest in people seeking a new source of satisfaction other than the material” (Philip Cushman in Nuber 1995, p. 22). To that end, they try to blur the distinction between material and immaterial goods, since “if people were […] really aware of this distinction it would endanger the consumer society. […] Therefore they try – e. g. through advertising – to establish a connection between material products and a feeling of individual well-being” (Gerhard Scherhorn in Nuber 1995, p. 25).

36In this economic system the consumer is degraded to the role of buyer. Not the goods but the process of buying is central and great efforts are made to stage this as an adventure. Even though appeals are made to consumers, given their responsibility towards nature and their fellow beings, to think and act regionally, ecologically, and socially, it is virtually impossible under the current framework conditions to avoid being sucked in by the pressure to buy, however subtly it is exerted. Renouncing consumption in the sense of not going to buy things is also politically not desirable, since politicians actively and massively woo the consumers as a key factor in the upkeep and stability of whole sectors of the economy, persuading them to go out and buy real assets or articles. This buying thus becomes an activity, an adventure, an economically significant occupation.

3.4 Having things – Individuation through Ownership

37Being able to acquire something can also be seen as the active realization of freedom (cf. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Philosophy of Law). It is part of the character of a physical good that it lets itself be acquired and is then at one’s disposal. This is achieved through the buying process, the result of which is ownership of the good. With the purchase the buyer acquires full rights of usage and command over it (rights of ownership and mastery). The having, that is the owning of a good, opens up new, in my opinion, key dimensions in relation to the individuation process, which derive from the following options:

• to acquire something as an act of freedom;
• to have complete command over something as a boundary to the external;
• to have the choice between being able to use one’s own possession oneself at any time or of allowing it to be used for a fee;
• to have the choice of doing nothing with it.

38Goods which are used but are not in the ownership of the user tap into these dimensions only in a restricted way, if at all. Once goods have left production they initially have no social form or subjective significance, insofar as they are separated from their social context. For the consumer the industrially produced product is nothing special or individual, it is – for a start – arbitrarily exchangeable. However, goods are not only the materialized ideas of a designer or manufacturer, and in that sense complete; they also provide a surface onto which future owners can project their desires, visions, and needs. The original technical-functional use intended and inherent in the product does not suffice to grasp the possibilities that an object offers. Only through acquisition are goods embedded into definite relationships with human beings. Into which ones remains open, for as long as they are on the market (cf. Sorgo 2006).

39The potential of an object extending far beyond the function attributed by the manufacturer/seller thus really only arises firstly through its relation to the individual human being, and secondly through its integration into an individual context, into specific life worlds. Thereby a multitude of highly subjective, possible interpretations open up as to how material goods can have an effect on identity. This effect depends on the one hand on the importance attributed to the goods for that purpose, and on the other to their resulting power in the shaping of identity.

40Due to the importance attributed to an object because of various attendant circumstances, such as it being a present, or a souvenir, or through the conscious development and fostering of its symbolic value (e. g. branding), a good becomes individual, or personalized in Jean Baudrillard’s terms (cf. Baudrillard 1991, p. 175). The individual meaning of an object arises from its projection potential offering an opportunity for the individual to identify with the object (internal effect) or differentiate him-or herself from others (external effect). The potential for identification and differentiation is connected directly with the institution of ownership (renting a Mercedes is not the same as owning one).

41In addition to the potential for identification and differentiation, ownership offers possibilities which are only indirectly related to the good per se. The extension of an individual’s scope and freedom of action comes about through the goods’ potential for substitution and complementation: on the one hand goods make daily chores easier, thus providing advantages of scale (extending the scope of action via relief from work, and substitution) and on the other hand they repeatedly offer new possibilities of action (extending the scope of action with new opportunities, by complementation). Under the given circumstances the realization of these two functions depends on the availability of such goods. At the moment only the institution of ownership seems to grant relevant advantages like saving of time, flexibility, and spontaneity. The major expectation placed on products or material goods is thus to be able to do anything at any time. In this case material goods are effectively reduced to their technical functionality, this being, however, a functionality which firstly only exists within the context of the individual’s life world, including his or her goods, and secondly clearly depends on their full availability, which currently can hardly be realized in any other form than through the institution of ownership.

4 Summary: Sustainable Consumption between Buying, Having, and Using

42In societies composed of free individuals, the motto “Who am I – and if yes, how many?”10 (cf. Precht 2007) as the core mantra of self design is becoming the central challenge. Goods can play a more or less significant role in responding to it. Thus an individual can always be effectively motivated to purchase an unsustainably large number and variety of goods if this supports his or her individuation process. Not only advertising, but also other developments like “lifelong learning”, technical and medical progress, or science and research in general contribute to the fact that humans increasingly see their identity as something that is permanently “designable”, “changeable” and “improvable” – and rightly so – (re)designing one’s self has become an ethically respectable task. The concomitant need and desire to be able to shape, change, and adapt one’s respective identity at any time is the essential prerequisite for the success of the “buy and dispose of” logic of the current industrial economic system.

4.1 Buying and Throwing away – the Logic of Industrial Mass Production

43Industrial mass production is based on the law of economy of scale, whereby the costs per item decrease the more items the plant produces. Competition on price leads to a self-accelerating spiral. Under the present circumstances (low-cost resources and transport, increasing costs for human labour) it makes economic sense to build bigger and bigger plants. Automation levels in the plants increase, making them more complex and more expensive, and furthermore they cannot be made redundant (unlike humans). Stopping production therefore costs a lot of money. That means, measures must be taken to ensure that plants work to full capacity. This leads necessarily to demand at least remaining constant, or perhaps even needing to be increased. In unsaturated markets this is not a problem, whereas in saturated, mature markets demand sinks to the level required for replacing products – meaning many plants would not be working to full capacity (cf. Giarini/Stahel 2000, pp. 48f.). The costs per item would grow again, and competition would decline. As costs cannot be reduced ad infinitum, production facilities cannot be moved to cheaper regions infinitely, the market must take the initiative. In saturated markets the demand for goods must be maintained so to speak artificially, or even increased, using both technical and non-technical strategies. Technical strategies are for instance shorter and shorter innovation cycles, reducing product lifetime, or increasing product variety.

44In non-technical strategies goods are presented in connection with desires, visions, and dreams and thus are symbolically loaded. Thereby a lot of effort is put into imbuing goods with a significance, something that in former times possibly occurred in another fashion or even by itself, over longer periods of production or usage. The estrangement of humans from their objectified ideas caused by industrial production and the thereby lost opportunity of identification with the production of material goods should be able to find itself again and to develop, if not in the production then at least in the consuming (in the further sense of buying, having, and using). However, the shorter the lifetime of products, the less identification potential they provide, and the less their having and using is relevant. All that remains is purchasing, and those – relatively soon – no longer wanted, used, or usable goods should not be a burden on the individual or on society, and so the efficient waste disposal sector gets rid of any worries about the “after-life” (in German “ent-sorgen” = “remove worries”).

45This linear, one-way industrial system has no interest in a sustainable use of goods with a correspondingly lower use of resources. According to industrial logic, economic systems in prosperous countries (in saturated markets) have less and less interest in providing society with important goods of high quality. Instead, ever more money is being invested in the production of meaning for goods, so that the existing system can be maintained, based on the paradigm of perpetual growth. Consequently, the real challenge in saturated markets is to develop products, paths, and ways to give essentially meaningless goods meaning – and hence enable buyers to identify with them.

4.2 Meaning – Coming and Going: The Problem of Sustainable Use of Goods

46But what is meaning, and how does it come about? Meaning is not inherent to goods “like a cookie in a box” (documenta, school of visitors d7/d6, Kassel, Germany, 1982). Perhaps it is useful to consider the example of modern or abstract art, i. e. that type of art where you cannot guess from the outside what its meaning is. One then seeks the meaning of the piece of art – what does it express? What does the artist want to say with it? On the basis of descriptions or explanations, if available, an understanding can be gained of the meaning the artist “shoves into” his or her object. The same is true for objects in daily use. Their functionality, look, feel, and information (e. g instructions for use, advertisement, image) create an infinite variety of possible meanings, which only when included in the concrete world of an individual become meaningful and specific in practice, i. e. unique. However, in order for the existing industrial economic system to be maintained, it is now not enough for objects to be given sufficient potential significance to support the individuation process, as will be explained below.

47It is of at least equal importance within industry’s “quick replacement system” (see above) that objects of everyday use lose their meaning again in a relatively short space of time, since meaning is of course to be realized by other, newer goods. Whenever shorter innovation cycles and a growing variety of products should lead to shorter and shorter purchasing intervals, high quality, repairable, long lasting goods, (“teddy bear goods” which can be “personified”, and with which one can identify for a longer period) – in short, goods which change everyday life into a specific, individual one – contradict this system. The ideal good from the system’s viewpoint is – as explained above – the disposable good. This means not only that it can only be used once, but also that it must lose its meaning relatively quickly; a good, therefore, that you can part with easily (“chewing-gum good”). Ideally, this separation from the good, the discarding process, will have been given a special meaning as a result of environment protection measures being taken which support and promote recycling. There is no need for the buyer/user/disposer to have an unpleasant feeling when throwing something away, as they are doing something “good” for the environment. This meaning is also one that the individual does not produce him-or herself, but one which has been externally developed and created in the last few years in the course of environmental protection efforts.

48In fact, therefore, meaning is not dependent on the goods alone, but on the context in which they can be purchased, used, or shown. Thus meaning arises through every individual’s life world – free according to Wittgenstein through “everything that is the case”. According to this an individual life environment is “the totality of facts, not of things” (Wittgenstein 1984, § 1.1).

49Alongside the possible meanings and contexts created by business, the individual’s own interpretation also adds to the creation of meaning. The fact that meaning can develop at all needs something which somehow connects the happenings, the experiences, the past, present, and future, in some way, which gives the single facts something in common, and perhaps allows them to become a single, unified whole. For this to happen, and perhaps also as the basis for the development of meaning, some form of “common thread” (in German “der rote Faden”) is required which turns the contexts, facts, and circumstances into something continuous, something specific that belongs to the individual and which the individual identifies with. This thread relates to the transcendental, to that immaterial, meta-physical dimension which in turn attributes meaning to the concrete case, the concrete thing, fact, and context. Whereas Fromm makes a distinction in this context between being and having, the two basic forms of existence (cf. Fromm 1976), a further form of existence seems to have been added in the course of the technical and social development of the last 30 years, namely the doing, the making, the being busy (not in the sense of Hannah Arendt’s vita activa, but in the sense of a demonstrative activism). In this context having is admittedly necessary, is instrumental, but no longer a form of existence. The having of goods is no longer in the foreground for the sake of having, but in the service of “being able to do anything at any time”. In order to judge a person, it is less and less important what the person owns (in the wealthy societies everybody has almost everything anyway), and increasingly important what he or she makes or does with it. Although it continues to be important to have as many goods and as great a variety as possible, it is no longer a question of materialism. In this context material goods are attributed a different form of meaning: one has to have everything possible in order to be able to do everything all the time.

50Seen in this way the meaning of ownership is to be reappraised. The questions of whether ownership can be “cracked”, and whether sustainable user systems after all have a chance of being successful on the markets will finally depend on whether it will be possible to succeed through a service economy in fulfilling customers’ demand “to be able to do anything at any time”, at a competitive price. That is to say the question must be asked of how the framework conditions/basic parameters need to be changed and to be adapted in order to guarantee the competitiveness of such offers. Can access (cf. Rifkin 2000), i. e. entry, access, and connection, replace ownership and – understood as a new principle of sustainable economic activity – be developed further? Or does “disappearance of ownership” remain an unrealistic vision?