Reflecting back on my journey through some aspects of modern theory I will not be modest and quote my own blog: ‘I feel I am missing on something and planning to read more, but will I? To be frank, I don’t know - it is comfortable and what is more important widely accepted to be lazy’. Now I am ready to give a definite answer to this question: yes, I will and I am already reading more because I have realised what I was missing. The mechanism of personal development was wound up. I glimpsed so many potential answers to every aspect of life, so that the tragic side of the development seemed as a fair compromise for this knowledge. I held my breath and jumped into the abyss regardless.
The topic I will discuss in this blog is the synthesis of few issues covered earlier. Two past blog entries (on Terry Eagleton and Ayn Rand) gave me the impetus for writing this ‘extension’. I will try to address consumerism as the tool for society conformation.
Industrial Revolution with its cheap widely available products triggered consumption paranoia across all social classes. Spending and consequent consumption of more than one’s basic requirements became part of the nature of even the poorest. In fact, as Thorstein Veblen indicated in his 1899 ‘The Theory of the Leisure’, often the basic needs were compromised for so-called ‘wasteful consumption’. Displaying one’s social status via material goods became the sign of the times. Obviously ‘display status’ almost certainly was not the true representation of the real social status. Empty stomach and general lack of money were generously compensated in the only one fashionable frock. That psychological tendency of the person to appear well off despite the odds was accepted as‘normality’ across the societies. It triggered the assumption that individual fulfilment should be associated ‘with the survival of the system’ (Eagleton, T).
From there it rolled… in Western Europe and America. Socialist Russia held back substituting capitalist goods with visions of socialistic future. Nonetheless, time and change of the political regime erased all the dissimilarities. Across the world we are consuming, consuming, consuming as there is no tomorrow. Why? We have to offset the shift of our values towards materialism and stuff intellectual and spiritual void with more goods. The simple fact that the things we change are still look and function well makes me to wonder how far we have gone or have been led to.
Human weakness for self-indulgence and of course, formed through out the years positive attitude to conspicuous consumption made us an easy mouldable ‘material’ for capitalistic structures. We are spoiled for choices everywhere. The market is overflowing with goods and services. Even the simple food shopping might result in hours of choice torture. However, it seems to me like quite a good strategy for time waste: more products equal more time spent thinking about the product, equal less time spent on actual mind challenging analysis of the situation. New generation can not imagine themselves without a new gadget/item of clothing/piece of jewelry/shoes etc every month. The time in between purchases is spent in research of the following item to buy,
Constantly popping out myriads of new trends and never ending reminders of urge to be 'cool' and 'up-to-date' mean that individuals, concerned about 'display status' mentioned earlier, are being in continuous process of dreaming and planning the ways, how to get the desired product. The circle is eternal: new trend - process of dreaming - purchase - new trend etc. That consumer strategy is genius as it keeps billions of minds free of critical though. Elisworth Toohey ('Fountainhead') mediocrity* became a strive for 'originality'. We have so many original characters/goods/ideas nowadays that all of them are literally blurred into mediocre background. The world bright with advertisements is constraining us from analytical though destructing to harmless dreaming about next 'must have'.
* From his credo: Don’t set out to raze all shrines—you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity, and the shrines are razed
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