"When I look around me I see people making endless purchases of stuff they don’t actually need [...] I don’t understand any of it." Oh really, you don't? Then

"When I look around me I see people making endless purchases of stuff they don’t actually need [...] I don’t understand any of it." Oh really, you don't? Then you should do some reading on signaling[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Signaling http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Signaling] and evolutionary psychology. Humanity is driven by sexual pressure, and a big factor in that is social status. Most of the time people don't make purchases with their neocortex, but rather with their "reptilian", so analysis about their lives are out of the question.