What are you going to buy today? - Philosophy of narratives

This is a philosophical argument. Not advice for shopaholics. But if you are one, then you will have an easy time understanding this. This will make sense to anyone who is in the buying and selling equation.

What are you going to buy today?

A car?

A dress?

A book?

A painting?

Real state?

Stock?

Blog?.

Newspaper?

A ship?

Some Gasoline?

Grocery?

On Sale

Apart from items of food and travel, most of the things that we buy have a narrative. Most likely you will encounter these narratives in unexamined places. If you watch television, these are called advertisements. From the seller side they are called marketing strategy.  When you buy an apple phone, you are not just buying a phone. You are buying into their narrative. This is very obvious in luxury brands. These items which are five six, ten times more than their real production cost, yet still people buy them. And that inflated cost is nothing but the brand value, or the narrative. You are not just buying a pair of shoes, but Luis Vittoon. As everyone wants a pair of these, they are extremely costly. There mat actually be  a little more comfort in wearing them. But to check that you have to give a pair to a blind person and ask them to compare these shoes. Without any prior information on the brands. That is for someone to experiment on. But let's look at why you always buy narratives but not the goods.

Selling of narrative is very obvious when we consider famous brands. Everyone agrees they are overpriced, but still buy them if they have enough money. But its hard to identify this when you buy a packet of milk.

What is the narrative of a packet of milk?

You go to the grocey store and buy a packet of milk. Have you ever examined the thought process going on?

You may have one of these thoughts.

You may have seen cows being fed to produce milk. You may have remembered old macdonalds farm. You may have seen how they milk a cow, or done it yourself. You may have heard that cow milk is good for your health.

You may have remembered you enjoyed drinking milk. You may have seen an advertisement on specific brand. You may compare prices of different fresh milk packets and choose one which is just fine for your need.

You will plan to drink it today. Tomorrow or over the course if next week.

Now here is a summary of how it happened.

You saw milk, or remembered milk -> developped a need for it -> bought a milk packet to use it in future.

A packet of milk

As you can see we use a lot of past experiences and information available to generate a need, and we buy to fulfill this in the future. So essentially the narrative is created by your own thought process. "I am gonna be happy drinking milk in the future" is the conclusion of this narrative. But here is a thought. If you just stick to the facts there is no gurentee that narrative is gonna work. It is likely it will work but there are so many possibilities. Basically you're just buying a narrative which created by your own head. I'm not asking you to stop drinking milk.  But better understand ourselves.

The milk can be expired.

It can spill, all of it.

You may not be alive time you go home.

You may not like milk taste

You can get allergic to milk.

Someone might drink it all while you're busy

There are many more which can happen, other than your narrative. And life is full of endless possibilities. So, let's be aware of our narratives, so that we can not stick with them when we fail to see them becoming true. So, we do not cry for some spilled milk or get angry with  cat for drinking your milk.