The end of the Consumer society

Western civilisation has reached a strange place at the start of the 21st century: fatalistic, superstitious, afraid of knowledge, uninspired by democracy. We are suspicious of science, fretting that it tampers with nature. We are anti-intellectual. Wisdom, after all, is aged and gnarled, offending our cult of unblemished youth. The growing trend in religion is faith that is dogmatic and apocalyptic. We distrust our rulers, but are resigned to their rule. We doubt we can make a difference.

This is a quote from Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole

We are in a period of change and as a pyschologist would say a peroid of re-evaluation. And so I guess we might be afraid.

And so...

What would Jesus buy?

the dominant idea of our time is consumerism, a mutant child of capitalism. It puts the onus on citizens to sustain the economy by shopping. Consumerism has its basis in orthodox liberal economic theory: private wealth generates demand for goods, the supply of which employs workers who get wages to spend on more goods. The circle turns virtuously. The problem comes once essential needs - food, shelter and the like - are met. New needs have to be invented. The economy gets skewed towards inflating people's appetite for trivia and branding it as necessity.

And I think we are witness to that, and also witness to a mass media in decline, and so there is an urgency to sell more

Consumerism, in Barber's view, exploits the unsophisticated and voracious demands of children and makes adults emulate them. It actively promotes the pursuit of bliss through ignorance. It is fundamentally hostile to history and metaphysics, to anything in fact that might intervene in a citizen's consciousness and make him aware of the difference between what he wants now, as an individual, and what he might want in the long-term, or for society. So, for example, he fancies another cheeseburger, but he would also like a healthy cardiovascular system. He wants an SUV, but he also wants a temperate planet. Consumerism makes it imperative that he choose McDonald's and the Range Rover.

This is the political economy of the Denaissance. A peasant in a pre-modern society didn't distinguish between what he wanted and what he needed, because they were the same thing - a full stomach and a roof over his head. The 21st-century consumer applies the same sense of atavistic urgency to his desire for a blueberry muffin or a smoothness of chin that can only be achieved by the simultaneous application of five tiny razor blades.

A rather sharp obsevation. we see a rise of a knowledge of what we eat, where we fly, carbon footprints, and a growing urgency of over how we might preserve our ecology.

These fly in the face of a consumerist culture, because we question what we buy and why we buy it

Via the Guardian

Comments

[rafael]

I'm glad you liked the piece I wrote. I should clarify that the line 'Western civilisation has reached a strange place etc ...' at the start of your post isn't a quote from the 'Consumed' book. Those are my words, summarising the state we're in as part of a review of the book.

Don't mean to be a pedant, but I wouldn't want any of your readers to get the wrong idea.

[Alan moore]

Thank you Rafael,

I will correct.

Thanks for posting, and would love to hear more were you prepared to comment?

Alan

[ノースフェイス]

羅津、パイオニア、男性は3場所は通年不凍港であり、両方が北朝鮮政府の経済と貿易港によって承認されたままです。

[グッチ]

同県亘理町荒浜地区にある阿武隈川沿いの堤防。近くに住んでいた男性（６０）は２階建て自宅の１階が浸水したが、流失は免れたため「住み慣れた土地を離れたくない」と修復を決意。昨年９月、建設業者に予約金１００万円を支払い、年末までに仮設住宅から自宅に戻れるはずだった。