Consumerism
--
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
People go to work against their free will; they feel obliged. They are doing tedious jobs that have to be done to sustain the living standards of society. They do boring jobs for a relatively low income. They have to because they do not have many capitalistic skills to create ‘income’ with. These individuals are persons just like us, with feelings and needs. But we as a society treat them as slaves only because they are not naturally privileged with capitalistic abilities.
Technology companies created the largest power structures ever to control society; they amplify the media. Massa propaganda vehicles to distribute maxims of monopolistic corporations and fascist politicians. The main goal is imprinting as many people as possible with their symbols and ideas. Spreading the word of consumerism. People at large are kept ignorant of the methods by which they are indoctrinated and manipulated.
A society that is based on consumerism, “I am what I buy”. Where money does not mean freedom, but rather imprisonment. For most, money is more like a gas than a claim for freedom. The culture industry programs us to spend. The culture industry created and used the most psychological and social manipulative techniques to influence individuals so that the consumer will act as they want, which is against the spirit of capitalism.
The theory of culture industry states that “popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods — films, radio programmes, magazines, et cetera — that are used to manipulate mass society into passivity.” Making society docile and content like soldiers in an army.
Society is indoctrinated. We do not know who we truly are; we are disillusioned. Constantly searching for something to fulfil our existential needs with. When you place someone in prison, in total solitude, he will be open for everything after a while. His senses are deprived of stimuli so that stimulus becomes a hundred times stronger. Our world is full of stimuli, and we cannot live without it; we are addicted. Luckily for us, there are enough very charitable institutions that will generously provide us with our needs.
Conveyances of containerships constantly supply us with our needs, which are made in third world countries by people who work under poor work conditions. Warehouses full of low-quality plastic toys, where people work for minimum wage and are constantly under the pressure of a sentinel (boss). Going to the lavatory under work hours is strictly prohibited, “time is money”.
When the workday is over, there is time for leisure. You listen to the radio, where there are short pieces of music between ads. At home, you can finally relax and watch a series on your new super-duper TV. Do not make it too late, because thou shalt work tomorrow.
With the invention of the clock, we could precisely measure time, at least precisely enough. It is an important tool in the natural sciences; for example, we can measure the velocity of distant bodies with a clock. We can also measure the ‘velocity’ of production and see who works fastest and who works slowest. We can design performance indicators; you have to make at least a hundred components an hour because that is the average. By doing this, we normalize workers, no time for being. We strip people of emotions and make workers out of them. Thereafter we put them in front of a conveyer belt in a factory with nets around it, so they cannot commit suicide.
We cannot blame the consumer. It is not their fault; they are victims of an authoritarian system. A system that rewards individualism and constantly informs to consume. If we want to change, we need renewed incentives to increase our living standards, which capitalism is intended for. Capitalism criticized mercantilism, and I criticise ‘the keep up with the Joneses’ consumer capitalism. I am not discarding capitalism, I think it is great, but certain problems need to be fixed if not already obvious.
In this banal society, where people are constantly searching for meaning in the wrong places. Things are not likely to change unless something big happens, like the rise of a new world order…
