I am not a consumer.

In the technical sense, in the sense used by economists and politicians, of course, that's exactly what I am. I purchase both goods and services almost every day. Like more than 30 million other anonymous carbon blobs, I push the Canadian economy along.

But, if you want to earn my undying hatred, please refer to me as a consumer. Because that's what I've aspired to be all my life. Someone who mindlessly consumes. A member of the consumer society.

Medieval societies didn't have single blanket terms for all their people. Nobles and peasants lived on radically different planes of existence, and the order of things was thought to be ordained by God in what's now referred to as the Great Chain of Being. But with the American and French revolutions, with the rise of a middle and then a working class, change came roaring in.

People were placed on a more equal footing. The short-lived first French Republic saw "Citizen" become the address of choice. Some forms of address, like Mister or Miss, could be broadly applied across all social and economic classes.

Before the end of the Cold War, it was pretty uncommon to hear people--even in the avowedly capitalist West--referred to only as consumers. We were citizens, or "the [fill in nationality] people," or just people. If an election was coming, we became voters.

But something strange happened between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the day the planes struck the Twin Towers.

Maybe it was the loss of a (seemingly) implacable and powerful foe in the form of the Soviet bloc. Maybe it was the rise of the communications age. Maybe we just lost our minds slowly, and no one noticed.

As I write this, Google shows 20,700,000 results for the phrase "Canadian consumer," almost double the 11,200,000 that turn up for "Canadian citizen." Other search engines produce similar results.

We constantly hear about the mood of this bizarre collective entity, "the Canadian consumer." Its confidence is up or down, its mood is stable or fickle. Stockbrokers and public policy makers read these entrails and send millions of dollars flowing here and there.

Little by little, the primary worth of a human being has been reduced to the economic. Whatever keeps the economy going--consuming--is good. Whatever slows it, whether unemployment or saving money, is now bad.

Every day, a new study comes out about productivity or spending, or personal debt. Every event is reduced to its monetary component. How many work hours were lost playing Pac Man on Google?

How much money has the BP oil spill cost the stock market?

How will the Euro crisis affect capital markets?

Will the rise of the Chinese consumer buoy the economy?

This monetization of the universe has bizarre consequences. We can find out how much lung cancer costs the economy. Someone has worked out the lost hours of work, the cost of medical care and insurance.

But find me a chart that shows tears shed at hospital bedsides. I can tell you how much it costs to raise a child from infancy, but where is the pie chart showing parental joy, fear and hope?

Because these things--the things we actually live for--are not measured, they are losing relevance. Our society is driven by the economy, and the economy is driven by an endless round of consumption--of things we don't need--for its own sake.

I don't know about you, but my life is about more than consuming. There are a lot of things I care about, a few about which I am passionate. None of them are defined by buying crap.

I am not a vending machine. I am not a robot. I am not a statistic, a number, an anonymous ant in the hill.

I am not a consumer.

mclaxton@langleyadvance.com