Power is not a zero-sum game...(cont.)
Refusal to buy into the consumer mentality is the refusal to be cheapened and negated. Consumption is not only surrender to materialism, it is denial of subjectivity, denial of self.
The continual rush of signals/advertisements that impugn our humanity is the source of much of our unhappiness.
The messages are designed to make us feel inadequate, inferior, incomplete. By successfully planting such absurd notions in our heads, the corporate takes control of the corporeal. The power of choice and the demand of identity are subjugated, replaced with a nagging doubt that serves as a control mechanism over the general population.
As consumer, you give away your self-esteem and your imperatives. In fact, consumer is to corporation what cog is to mechanism.
To reject the garb of the consumer is to consider ones own needs in the sober light of self-awareness. What you do not have, you most likely do not need. Our needs are actually few and classic. Once we have housing, food, relationships with people, we have almost all we need. The rest is distraction-attraction.
But corporatism thrives only when we spend without a true concern for our own interests. When we buy sickeningly sweet sodas we end up thirsting for water. Perhaps we are better off foregoing the intermediate and heading directly for the essential?
There are, in my estimation, few advantages to consumption. Some might argue that it leads to job-creation and higher levels of employment. I argue it leads to GREATER DEPENDENCE ON THE ARTIFICIAL.
Part and parcel of the current mode of production, the consumer is working to produce the "goods" that are bought to fill a void based in the very act of production.
When one's life is dedicated to working for a living in order to acquire the products that will make of their lives a "paradise of want", one never makes a life for oneself. Too busy running on the treadmill of economics, the worker opts for consumption as a stop-gap to the emptiness that economics offers. "False-fullness", like a stomach bloated from too much gas, a form of existential indigestion permeates our endeavours to find satisfaction.
Yet, satisfaction rests in our being as surely as dissatisfaction.
To accept ones "faults" is to accept ones humanity, warts and all. And I fail to see what harm it does to see ourselves in a clear light. Certainly, one of the advantages of age is the sense of satisfaction that comes from experience assimilated and available as wisdom. The wise have little need for what they "lack". They can be seen as rejecting the system of denigration, announcing their emancipation by refusal to be marginalized in the service of the corporate...
..........................................................................................................................................................................
Disposable economy is disposable society is disposable life. The degree to which we are consuming, we are disposing of ourselves and all we actually need. The current rate of environmental degradation and resource depletion is directly related to the failed ethic of disposability. What is easily discarded is not so easily reclaimed. When we toss our own sense of self out by purchasing something that leaves us needy for more of the same, we engage in the destruction of our world. Such activity is appetite, the homonculous of consumerism enlarged in mouth, dreadfully diminished in digestive capacity standing on pinfeet wanting ever more. Pathetic image that it is, this is our portrait as consumers. It is unsustainable as surely as it is unstable.
The continual rush of signals/advertisements that impugn our humanity is the source of much of our unhappiness.
The messages are designed to make us feel inadequate, inferior, incomplete. By successfully planting such absurd notions in our heads, the corporate takes control of the corporeal. The power of choice and the demand of identity are subjugated, replaced with a nagging doubt that serves as a control mechanism over the general population.
As consumer, you give away your self-esteem and your imperatives. In fact, consumer is to corporation what cog is to mechanism.
To reject the garb of the consumer is to consider ones own needs in the sober light of self-awareness. What you do not have, you most likely do not need. Our needs are actually few and classic. Once we have housing, food, relationships with people, we have almost all we need. The rest is distraction-attraction.
But corporatism thrives only when we spend without a true concern for our own interests. When we buy sickeningly sweet sodas we end up thirsting for water. Perhaps we are better off foregoing the intermediate and heading directly for the essential?
There are, in my estimation, few advantages to consumption. Some might argue that it leads to job-creation and higher levels of employment. I argue it leads to GREATER DEPENDENCE ON THE ARTIFICIAL.
Part and parcel of the current mode of production, the consumer is working to produce the "goods" that are bought to fill a void based in the very act of production.
When one's life is dedicated to working for a living in order to acquire the products that will make of their lives a "paradise of want", one never makes a life for oneself. Too busy running on the treadmill of economics, the worker opts for consumption as a stop-gap to the emptiness that economics offers. "False-fullness", like a stomach bloated from too much gas, a form of existential indigestion permeates our endeavours to find satisfaction.
Yet, satisfaction rests in our being as surely as dissatisfaction.
To accept ones "faults" is to accept ones humanity, warts and all. And I fail to see what harm it does to see ourselves in a clear light. Certainly, one of the advantages of age is the sense of satisfaction that comes from experience assimilated and available as wisdom. The wise have little need for what they "lack". They can be seen as rejecting the system of denigration, announcing their emancipation by refusal to be marginalized in the service of the corporate...
..........................................................................................................................................................................
Disposable economy is disposable society is disposable life. The degree to which we are consuming, we are disposing of ourselves and all we actually need. The current rate of environmental degradation and resource depletion is directly related to the failed ethic of disposability. What is easily discarded is not so easily reclaimed. When we toss our own sense of self out by purchasing something that leaves us needy for more of the same, we engage in the destruction of our world. Such activity is appetite, the homonculous of consumerism enlarged in mouth, dreadfully diminished in digestive capacity standing on pinfeet wanting ever more. Pathetic image that it is, this is our portrait as consumers. It is unsustainable as surely as it is unstable.
posted by Edklesiastes at 11:31 AM
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