Is There a Line Between Conscious Consumption and Constant Guilt?

I want more, I know better, and I feel worse...

I originally wanted to title this article ‘Let Me Be a Naïve Victim of Capitalism’, basically allowing the entirety of this piece to be about wanting to be able to blindly consume without guilt.

However, the more I dug into the idea of just wanting to consume, I realised that I have no solid argument to back up my thinking.

I think that’s probably quite representative of this article’s overtone – I couldn’t actually allow myself to be ignorant about consumption without some underlying guilt.

A few days ago, whilst sat at work and scrolling Facebook (pathetic, I know), I came across an advert from KFC – a new breakfast offer (I didn’t even know KFC sold breakfast).

In reality, what they offered is not that special: a crispy piece of chicken topped with bacon, sandwiched between two pancakes, drizzled in caramel sauce. Actually, quite a diabolical mix of ingredients.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel a genuine thrill at the idea—because for those of us outside America, that gluttonous dream is something to aspire to.

Fried chicken in a pancake? Come on.

In Poland, KFC is basically the highest standard of fried chicken (though we do now have Popeyes). It’s not fresh, it’s not high-quality, but it’s always hot, juicy, salty, and unapologetically to the point. My love for KFC goes deep.

The same thing happened just two weeks ago—same platform, different temptation. This time it was a Spicy Bacon McCrispy from McDonald’s, staring me down like it knew exactly what kind of day I was having.

But the dream died quickly…

That deep, imaginary craving for grease, salt, and indulgence is always followed by a wave of guilt—not just over the ethics of eating KFC or McDonald’s, but over the fact that I’m both a willing participant and an easy target of this kind of advertising.

I think it plagues us all - why are we eating meat? Why aren’t we boycotting McDonalds? How can KFC really serve chicken so cheap? Is my life really that dull that I’m excited over a McDonald’s advert?

Fast-food is bad for us, heart attacks, grease, salt – you name it, the rhetoric is there.

The guilt is there.

And of course, most of this is true, hence the moral dilemma. But in a sense I’m fed up.

I want to enjoy. I want to consume. I want to be naive.

It’s at this time that I want to justify my desire to consume without guilt.

I could present some case about growing up poor and to some extent feeling like I deserve to be able to consume without guilt in lieu of financial worries.

I could talk about nostalgia surrounding junk food and British childhood, a good case for enjoying cheap, filling fast-food.

But I don’t want to pull the victim card, it doesn’t feel right – firstly, my desire to constantly consume is dirtier and more morally grey than the above-mentioned points, and secondly goes beyond just fast-food.

Or maybe I just don’t want to give myself a break because I don’t feel like it’s justified?

Either way, using that level of ‘justice’ as an excuse and aggregator of power feels wrong.

Part of me just wishes the consciousness attached to consumption could disappear…

What was it like to live in a world where no one thought cigarettes were bad?

Or the internet couldn’t tell us the reality of factory farming?

Or our main source of information were newspapers that definitely DIDN’T tell us about Coca Cola killing Union organizers in Latin America.

But now that I know this, now that it’s mentioned online, it becomes hard to consume without a heavy sense of guilt.

And of course, we’re also sold a solution for this. Which in itself involves consumption (though perhaps in a more ethical sense, like veganism or buying second-hand fashion).

Despite the central argument here being that guilt is perhaps justified, the point I always come back to is that perhaps guilt is entirely futile.

Picture it this way – you see a pair of jeans online – they’re perfect, EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANTED, well-priced, fashionable – all of the things that drive us to buy jeans.

Often, we’re not just on clothing websites because we need new jeans, we’re there because we have to attach some meaning to our disposable income, and our lives.

Anyway, back to the jeans. You’re going to buy them AND you know it.

BUT… they’re likely made in Bangladesh via ethically murky labour, delivery to your house is bad for emissions, fast-fashion is killing the planet, the dye used to colour the jeans is linked to cancer…

This loop has rolled around in my head again and again.

Do I really need the jeans? Absolutely fucking not.

Will I just mull it over in a weird cycle of guilt for approximately 48 hours and then buy them anyway? PROBABLY.

So maybe I should just lighten up, buy the jeans, enjoy the jeans, wear them, feel sexy and good, and accept that I’m a small cog in a wider system of unethical and damaging consumption.

Probably? Maybe? It’s even impossible in this sense to justify my discourse.

There are alternatives, like going to a second-hand store and filtering through shit that nobody wants, hoping to find a gem - some people enjoy it, but I DO NOT.

I don’t want to rifle through paint-stained t-shirts, overworn jeans, XXXXL jogging bottoms and single shoes.

I’m prepared to admit the following (all whilst sitting at home from the comfort of my MacBook, likely made with underpaid Chinese labour)- scrolling the LOVELY H&M website is ten times more comfortable.

I also don’t want to buy $300 jeans from a millionaire influencer with a shit-eating grin, just because it’s made with organic cotton and clearly marketed towards being more ethical.

(I actually can’t even afford $300 jeans).

I know the entire cycle is designed to be this way: convenient.

Maybe I should be willing to lose some comfort for the sake of ethics, or value labour more, or learn to only shop for better quality items when in need, but I, and probably millions of others, do not, and probably will not.

In one of my recent articles, I wrote about using ChatGPT being my ‘life-coach’, but how many Amazon rainforests am I burning through to project my own feelings back at myself through an AI chat bot?

I don’t know if the issue is my guilty tendency in itself or an over-consciousness (and complete ignorance of) the reality of consumption.

I’m not arguing that knowledge or transparency is necessarily bad, just that it makes things even more confusing, particularly in a hyper-speed world of social media, advertising, social standards, influencers, and trying to keep up.

But it’s not just about guilt, there’s an added consciousness that comes with access to all of the information in the world at our fingertips - how we perceive what we’re being sold.

For example, I used to marvel at adverts with impressive techniques used to capture audience attention – now I’ve seen ‘how it’s done’ by someone on TikTok.

I now know it can be done in a bedroom with an iPhone. That type of advertising isn’t special anymore.

This is particularly the case with social media leading to an explosion of homemade adverts.

Now it’s easy to spot out an Instagram drop-shipping advert.

I watch them and immediately see through them. I know someone is buying a phone stand from China for a dollar and selling it to me for $30 because they’ve attempted to market is as ‘luxury’ or ‘bespoke’.

Again, that transparency is nice but it makes it impossible to just make a purchase without thinking it through many times.

It’s quite a heavy weight to carry.

The same applies to shopping centres – I want to wander around them on a Saturday and mindlessly enjoy wasting my money and time.

But instead, I’m weighed down by the thought of how depressing, plastic, fake, too bright and overstimulating they are.

Immediately, I’m thrown into an existential crisis about what the hell I’m doing with my life.

Shouldn’t I be doing something better with my weekend?

They are empty and depressing and weird and overwhelming, but sometimes I just want to enjoy buying trinkets.

Equally, I want to not think about whether I have microplastics in my balls.

Or whether seed oils are bad for me.

Or whether I’m eating too many ultra-processed foods.

Or whether this product has palm oil.

Or whether this avocado has come from dubious sources linked to gang crime.

Or whether the jeans I bought have forever chemicals in.

In reality, I probably just want space. In reality, consumption is part of all we have.

We work, we eat, we shop, we shit, we die.

(obviously there’s more to life like community, love, spirituality, wholesomeness, sunsets etc).

But materialism is part of what drives us now.

Can I not at least do it without the heavy weight of guilt hanging from my shoulders?

And that’s all I really have to say. I’m left with the obvious following questions like…

Does my consumption matter?

Does it collectively matter?

There could be something to say here about shifted responsibility, about how we as the consumer tend to have the blame pinned on us, about how it’s actually the fault of big corporations.

But again, that feels like a cheap ‘get out of jail free card’.

I’m certainly still actively, and knowingly, part of a quite unethical and vicious cycle.

So maybe that’s the best I can do — hold the contradiction.

Wanting to be conscious and wanting to be careless.

Maybe that’s all any of us are doing. Trying to find a middle ground between nihilism and guilt — between buying the burger and boycotting the brand.

Maybe the guilt doesn’t have to disappear, but it also doesn’t have to be the only thing I feel.

Maybe I can feel good in the jeans and bad about where they came from.

Maybe that’s not hypocrisy — maybe that’s just honesty.

And maybe — just maybe — that’s enough.