I don’t think the problem is so much objects v. experiences, but the difference between consumerism and other ways of being. Marketers want us to ‘buy experiences,’ so they seek to sell us expensive, one-off, packaged experiences. They are often passive and require little of us but our credit cards and — ideally for their viral marketing — digital cameras and social media accounts.

Instead, I would say that the goal should, maybe, be away from consumerism towards acquiring skills, making things, sharing, interacting. The opposite of consuming goods is not consuming experiences but making things. Of course, if there’s nothing to market or if you’re selling a service that makes the ‘consumer’ more capable afterwards of fulfilling their own needs, then there’s little incentive for a profit hungry corporation to market it.

To me, the market in ‘experiences’ just shows the relentless advance of consumer capitalism and, with the realisation that is has left a person unhappy (because one product of consumerism is more desire to consume and a belief that one can only get happiness by consuming), an attempt to find yet more ways to consume. Bottom line: the reason you’re not satisfied isn’t that you bought the wrong thing, it’s that the vast majority of satisfaction comes from other source: the love of those close to us, the joy from doing a good job, the engagement from learning something new, the thrill of doing something you couldn’t before, the sometimes painful feeling of growth…