Tag Archives: culture obsession

March 16, 2013

330. Consumer Rehab in Equal Money Capitalism

By Marlen

 

Continuing from:

307. CapitalismUS: Pursuit of Happiness

308. Might Makes Right: CapitalismUS

 

 

 

Problem                                                                 

 

The alienation of the spectator to the profit of the contemplated object (which is the result of his own unconscious activity) is expressed in the following way: the more he contemplates the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his own desires. The externality of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears in the fact that his own gestures are no longer his but those of another who represents them to him. This is why the spectator feels at home nowhere, because the spectacle is everywhere.  – Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle [1]

 

Soft Imperialism by Culture and Media – Continuation

  • Creating needs in people, tell them consuming is  ‘what life is all about’ and you get a certain market that will live a devoted life to praise consumption and reduce life to a series of experiences that end the moment a new trend comes out, a new experience to buy, a new gadget to wear and upgrade one’s image of  success worn as clothes, accessories, shoes, cars, pictures of being having the ‘great life’ – but, deep inside there is a strong sense of alienation that is  difficult to look from ‘outside’ because it is virtually everywhere as part of ‘who we are’ and the identities we become, which are the byproduct of the same profitable society that breeds consumers, not living beings.

 

  • Trading our goods and services has nothing o do with the cult of the image that we have built around consumerism, it is necessary to realize that our lives cannot be determined by the amount of experiences we have, how many ‘valuable objects’ we own, because these are all the values that keep the same system running, wherein our needs and desires are shaped in the image and likeness of celebrities that we seek to mimic and adopt as our own identity. That’s the configuration of our society and that’s why Debord emphasizes that we feel ‘at home’ nowhere, because the spectacle is everywhere, and everyone buys into it.

 

The spectacle within society corresponds to a concrete manufacture of alienation. Economic expansion is mainly the expansion of this specific industrial production. What grows with the economy in motion for itself can only be the very alienation which was at its origin. (Debord, 1967)

 

  • What we grow every time we buy is our self-image built around the cult of what we own, how we look, what we choose as our ‘lifestyle.’ This alienation is not only existent toward that which we buy, having no idea how it is produced and where it will end once we’re ‘done’ with it – we get alienated from the very physical reality that we are as our physical body. We’ve made of our flesh and bones an Image that we seek to Adapt according to the images on billboards, creating eating disorders and self image obsessions that occupy a being’s entire life where even if food is not consumed, the image seeking pretty much consumes the being alive, making of an internal conflict a time-consuming entity that leads us to be absolutely unaware of reality, but only exist in the glorious self interest of me-my-image-and-myself.

 

  • The consumer culture is the greatest form of degradation that we have faced as  humanity, because it stopped being a momentary form of distraction a few hours a day or a momentary treat after a hard day of work, it’s become who we are and how we behave and  have shaped our values, beliefs, morals, relationships according to these  Images that are upgraded every season. This means that: you have to buy NEW things every time to be ‘up-to-date’ in a society that believes it is important to  have a fresh look and  identity according to mass-media trends and ensure you are ‘upgraded’ and follow what your social tribe of preference dictates to buy every other season – this has become ‘mandatory’ if you don’t want to face marginalization for not being ‘cool enough’ to have enough money to Buy new things on a constant basis. 

 

  • Children are taught to seek love, money and superhero traits – teenagers learn to be disillusioned about  a world that has nothing to do with the fantasy presented in movies and videogames, new heroes representing the ideal lifestyles of perfectly tailored models that become ‘the voice of a generation’ emerge as depressive-and-on-meds type of figures that values more spending time feeling a constant need for ‘something’ and seeking it surfing in the net, consuming drugs, buying, drinking, gossiping, playing with gadgets rather than enjoying physical interaction with each other to learn how to live in the first place.
  • What’s the common denominator here? People seek experiences generated in the idleness of our sedentary lives that require constant updates of personal computers, phones, more and bigger flat screen TVS that constantly imprint the images we want to become. But, who has decided to present this to us? It is only in the benefit of those that sell the products that we get to ‘choose’ what we desire. Entertainment would not be an industry if the prefab images shown on TV weren’t available for sale.

 

  • We can see the pattern already: the main problem is our constant desire to Experience –  the world revolves around this. There would be no point to buy, consume, visit places and eat up stories to make us feel good.  We have diminished ourselves to a collection of experiences, memories, people that we believe are important to us for what they make us feel. Who benefits from this? Everyone that is able to create the perfect setting, the perfect stage for such ‘insta-moments,’ the perfect drug-drink to consume, the greatest clothes to wear, the greatest cars to show off, the most benefits that only a few can afford – which makes it even More special and exclusive.
  • We live to praise our self-images that determine how valuable we are at the eyes of everyone else – is it? Or have we just become an illusion to such an extent that we cannot even get to question how we got ourselves into this insatiable state of consumption, leading us to a life of constant energy fixed desires, becoming drug addicts, sex  addicts, TV junkies, celebrity gossipers, government bashers, economy illiterates, freedoms seekers and god seekers, getting high and jumping off balconies to challenge ‘the system’ and make a general anthem of ‘Ignorance is Bliss’ as the road to walk for the next generations to come. 

    How long can we keep this show running?  We have reached the bottom of our downward spiral – how much more repetition can we take?

 

  • Let’s look at our thoughts, see how many of them relate to an experience about who we are, how others see us, what we want to buy next, where we want to be? Were we the creators of these seemingly unstoppable desires? are we the result of the perfect feel good enslavement that is sold to us every time we want to Feel something new? Yes, it is – and we have all fell for it –doesn’t matter ‘who’ you are,  individualization has been made the most important thing that we hold, beyond any common sense of being breathing physical beings.

 

  • The truth is we have never really been ‘ourselves’ because we have only existed as mind systems seeking for energetic experiences that are bottled up, tagged and sold because we desire, hope and need it. We have sold our physical body to the devil, which is the system that we all feed with our desires, the greatest treats that justify a life of slavery, poverty and abuse for a majority,  because we all work to get these bits of heaven in order to numb ourselves from our reality that we ended up victimizing ourselves from, believing that the corporate monster is to blame, instead of looking at the very thinking processes that fuel this entire machinery that is seemingly as unstoppable as our own mind – here I state: it is Only a Belief that it can’t be stopped – We  have to take ourselves to the origin of our thoughts to prove such belief is simply an expensive  delusion.

 

Solution                                                                

The Spectacle Meets Rehab

 

  • Considering practicality/money and necessity over experience, looking if what we want to buy in fact only feeds our ‘self image,’ pursuing the experience of owning something, or who one will be when compared to others that don’t have what we do, and instead look at the facts if one in fact Need what we are about to buy, or if I one is subconsciously buying an character-accessory to store within this personal vault of memories and experiences that we define as ‘who I am.’

    This is a key experiment that I dare everyone reading this to do, and if you are Self Honest which means you don’t ‘fall’ for your desires, you should see a considerable amount of money remaining in your bank account/pocket/ under your mattress, because you will be able to stop yourself and realize that what you are buying is only an Illusion, that it will be a flickering moment just like a match that burns bright and consumes itself to ashes, requiring us to flick another to brighten the same darkness that we have avoided to become: physical stable living beings that do not require an Experience to be alive – think about this this, will generate a Great change in our consumer culture if we integrate this understanding in our day to day living behavior, which will include getting to know How our products are created, where they end up after they are no longer used and the consequential outflows of producing and distributing such products to satisfy our desires, then decide what we can keep and dispose all that only feeds greed.

  • Solutions for isolation with our current gadgetry lifestyles. There is nothing wrong with the techno-advances that we have, but a few considerations are shared here:  once that we realize that we are not images, we’ll spent less time cultivating our fascinations to further specialize the ‘who we are’ as this character/self image toward others, we’ll spend that time developing a relationship with ourselves, to get to know that Self that has only existed as the byproduct of our society, of our parents and the media that filled the ‘void’ in our lives.

    Here we can make it fun to – upon recognizing this prefab/ pre-packaged condition we all kept as ourselves– realize that we can in fact for the very first time in our human existence Decide who we want to be, integrate Values that consider our Equality as Life, living to become a contributor to a social transformation that will remove our spectacle attires, stripping ourselves  to see what remains once that we stop feeding our consumer driven and personality-cult obsessions. A group effort is required for this,each one of us will stand as an example of what it will take to stop being addicted to the mind and learn to appreciate the physical that is what has always been here, that we’ll  learn to trade as a living meaning of giving and receiving in Equality – no more greed for superiority and mind-driven personality fixes.

 

Rewards                                                   

  • Opening up our eyes from the illusion will mean a transformation in our entertainment and ‘variety production’ in this world. Imagine the amount of ‘special items’ dedicated to the cult of self that could be significantly reduced when people stop buying experiences and instead, learn how to invest on supportive items, genuinely enjoyable treats and re-learn how to communicate, share and essentially enjoy each other’s presence beyond the constant up keeping of a Character that we sold to others, in fear of being vulnerable about our real experiences, our questions, our thoughts and fears – we’ll be able to heal a drugged up, shopaholic and self abusive society with the ability to share our ‘Consumer Anonyms’ stories, as well as forgiving our constant competitions and fights over our pet peeves, that have also became necessary religions to idealize the perfect ‘originality’ that everyone sought to attain in our so-called lives.

 

  • We can make the crash and the fall of our mental high, the landing on Earth after the illusion of grandeur a humble experience to learn from each other, to forgive ourselves for having turned this Earth into a massive grave of products chocking animals on Earth an in the sea, bits of junk that once caused us a form of joy, never questioning if we actually needed that or not.

 

  • Consumerism as a disease will be treated at an individual level with the understanding that we have all complied to turn beings into slaves and nature, the animals, plants as assets that became accessories to our ideal prefab characters we sought to be and become. It is the least thing we can do after we have succumbed to a never quenching mind thirst for more, while forgetting that we are, beyond all, physical living beings that Live  and Breathe regardless of what we believe and experience at a mind level. Desire for more, Greed  is the real evil that we have to disintegrate from our core-programming, and we have the support here: Desteni  I Process.

 

 

For further reference, read  the Equal Money Wiki

 

 
Freedom is not Free Stuff that Stuffs up the World - Matti Freeman - Equal Money Capitalism

Artwork by Matti Freeman

Sources:

[1]Debord, G. (1967). The society of the spectacle. Retrieved from http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/16

 

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