Thinking About: Consumerism
I came to the opinion some time ago that the idea of
consumerism is one of, if not actually the definitively, stupidest ideas that
humanity has ever come up with. Yes, it’s even more stupid than religion – and
that’s saying something. The thought that a persons primary role in life is to
consume the fruits of industrial capitalism, with everything else as garnish,
honestly disgusts me. I feel like standing in the middle of a shopping centre
and shouting “I am not a consumer, I am a free man!” The concept of consumerism
is, I think, directly responsible for the deep shit the world finds itself in –
both economically and environmentally. We are being constantly extolled to buy
more stuff we don’t need with money we simply don’t have. The only way to
finance this is to borrow money against the future in the hope that there will
be enough money in the future to pay for it all. Well guess what – there isn’t,
hence the problems, the unemployment and the deepening crisis we’re in. The whole
system depends, so we are told, on ‘consumer confidence’. In other words, if
you feel it’s OK to go out tomorrow and buy that new car then everything will
be fine and we can go on as before until the end of time. What an incredibly
stupid way to run a planets economy. Did someone, or groups of someone’s,
really sit down and think up this idea and expect it to work in the real world?
Our economies are based on the abilities of businesses and governments to
convince us that everything is OK enough for us to keep spending with
confidence. The moment that spell is broken, and we look around us and see the
reality of the situation, the whole system is irretrievably fucked. Guess what
sports fans? Apart from those with their heads in the sand (or elsewhere) and
those with their fingers in their ears, singing “la, la, la, I’m not listening”
ever louder every day, everyone else realises that the system is well and truly
broken. The efforts – from quantitative easing and other equally bizarre
sounding initiatives – to ‘stabilise the markets’ aren’t working because more
and more people are waking up to the fact that capitalism (or whatever system
we’re actually living with at the moment) is inherently designed in its very
fabric to make the rich even richer and to work the rest of us to death to pay
for it all. Some of the proposed measures to ‘save the system’ could hardly be
more blatant – tax cuts for the rich (they are after all the job creators of
society) and pay freezes or cuts for the rest of us (you know – the ones who
actually work in their factories and their offices making the actual money). To
save an already broken system they honestly propose making the divide between
rich and poor even larger than it already is. At least they could offer to kiss
us before we get repeatedly fucked. The world wide protests against the
capitalist colossus should not have come as any surprise to commentators who
have witnessed the growing desperation of an increasingly impoverished
population. When backs are against the wall the only option – if you don’t want
to just lay down and give in – is to fight back. What good it will do is hard
to tell. These are early days and it’s very difficult to predict tomorrow’s
headlines especially these days. We have already seen some of the so-called free
nations responses to understandable frustration and anger at austerity measures
aimed at them to pay for the mistakes of the banks and other institutions that
are walking away from the disaster with bonuses intact. The cynical part of me
knows that history shows that the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. The
more optimistic part of me wonders if it must always be so.
6 comments:
I think we find ourselves where we are today by a series of paths that have converged: the consumerism you mention, the turning of government over to the moneyed interests, the uniform takeover of the means of mass communication by propagandists for the industrialists' cause. All these things have in common that they are doing the bidding of the rich and powerful. We do their bidding without realizing that what we are told is good for us is not, in fact, what is really good for us.
I think the path out of this morass must begin with good information which at this point will require something of a revolution, I'm afraid. And when (if) the problem becomes clear to us, we'll need to act en masse to overturn the current system.
The question: do The People still retain any ultimate power? Enough to overcome the moneyed class? I'm frankly shocked that the plutocracy protest movements currently underway have been allowed to stand for this long.
Could this be the final battle between the haves and have nots that Marx predicted? The solution is quit buying and live within your means. True, the economy will tank, but the rich will eventually lose some money if no one is buying. Maybe the rest of us will find some sustainable level of living that doesn't rely on over consumption.
wunelle said: The question: do The People still retain any ultimate power? Enough to overcome the moneyed class?
Yes, they (we) do. It's us that give them power and money. We vote for them, we put our money in their banks and we buy their over-priced stuff. If people stopped 'enabling' them then they couldn't get away with the shit that they pull.
V V said: Could this be the final battle between the haves and have nots that Marx predicted?
I don't think it's progressed that far yet - but I guess that stranger things have happened. If it is that 'revolutionary' it's *very* early days.
V V said: The solution is quit buying and live within your means.
That's a huge part of it, yes. If people didn't live beyond their means as a default setting then the world certainly wouldn't be in this mess. OK, maybe 'growth' wouldn't be in double figures but that's probably not a bad thing!
Great post. I'm working on a post right along these lines right now. Our entire economic system is dependent on the masses conforming to its definition of consumption and happiness, regardless of whether that is healthy for anyone or anything.
Wunelle --- Uh, huh, huh. You said "morass". I've always liked that word. It's one of those rare words where the actual definition and the sophomoric phonetic rendering of it by idiots like me (your welcome) are not that different.
Listening to NPR the other day, I was struck by the juxtapositioning of stories about discrepancies in wealth with a human interest story about women racing around town "hunting" for the latest bargains on expensive dresses. Our system of taking living things from living systems in our environment to create dead things that we stick in the corner of our living room strikes me as the height of stupidity. (Why is the word verification "bionsume"? That's kind of profound.)
karlo said: Our system of taking living things from living systems in our environment to create dead things that we stick in the corner of our living room strikes me as the height of stupidity.
Brilliant!
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