CONSUMERISM
(A satirical look at where we are not)
21st MAY 2001
There are magazines for every aspect of humanity and, as is our choice so often, every aspect of our inhumanity.
In South Africa there is a plethora of men's magazines - some good - some not so good and most of them try and cater for a spread of consumerist needs.
Is that what we are breeding now – is it what we have become - consumers?
Frank Zappa, that marvellous iconoclastic champion of individual freedom, once wrote a diatribe in an album liner note ("Them or Us" was the album, I think), directed against the nation of consumers that the United States has become.
This invective, entitled "Cheese", made me sit up and take note. The similarities between the alleged perceptions and values of the consumerist Americans and those I saw around me in South Africa were marked. Is it a global phenomenon?
Certainly it would be naïve to compare the demographic cross-section of American society with that of South Africa but for a nation that lives in the illusive reality that it has no composite identity, many ethnic groups are embracing an ersatz "culture" based on American consumerism in the misguided belief that it will provide that identity and some sort of essential value system.
This is indeed an indictment on how far we've let our inferiority monkey climb upon our backs - on both sides of the racial spectrum.
And it is a tragic example of our ethnic bereavement and our predilection for anything other than the uniqueness it is our right to claim for ourselves.
Rather than embrace that fledgling New South African ethnicity, it is easier to fall prey to the consumerist disease of wearing the labels of the ultimate marketing machine. The monster that has managed to convince us that we cannot think for ourselves any longer and that distraction into an external system of competitive measurement is the best way to pad our spiritual and moral rectitude.
Let’s be honest – what contribution has McDonald’s made to you, the planet or anything?
Except perhaps to offer yet another avenue to pursue in the parental abdication department.
I wonder how many parents tell their children of the impact Big Mac cattle grazing is having on our global environment?
I wonder how many parents know?
I wonder how many parents care?
Then we have magazines telling us what to wear, how to wear it, when to wear it and when it’s no longer acceptable to the superior consumerists - when to bin it!
We have magazines that tell us how to pleasure each other, what it is that we should be looking for in our soul mate and what steps to take to advance our chances in the consumerist dialogue with a member of the opposite camp.
That's another thing - it is the media that persists in perpetuating the polarity consciousness that has divided our species for over two thousand years. It is various forms of the media that has taken over from where the priestly misogynists left off. And it is the media that has constantly reinforced the schisms between the genders instead of attempting to point out that while there are obvious differences, we have within us the polarity of both sexes and all the ingredients required with which to attain harmony.
No, the consumerist ideology embraces the ethos of competition. The sexes must compete - it is human nature.
What a load of consummate bollocks!
We have allowed ourselves to become so spiritually disenfranchised that we now let journalists and marketing moguls tell us how to think.
What has happened to the instincts that drove us as children, where contentment was real and a “like totally Zen Happening, man”?
We were happy in the moment without looking for some form of external reward for something we had done.
While sitting in a pile of muddy goo playing with an Action Man doll I experienced some of the happiest moments of my existence.
I was the first boy in my neighbourhood to have a “doll” and I didn’t feel one shred of my sexuality being undermined because of it. On the contrary - I derived pure, absolute and pure enjoyment from it and yet miraculously had no yearning to plunder my sister’s cupboard looking for lingerie to wear, nor was I beset by an overwhelming desire to copulate with members of my own gender persuasion. The experience did not make me “queer” whatever the fuck that means.
Why do we have words like “adulterated” and why is this representative of corruption?
Because as the definition suggests – when something is mixed with the adult influence – it loses its purity – it becomes adulterated.
The macrocosmic personification of this “adulterated” society is the consumerist culture.
We do not have to become naïve to become more pure again; we just have to go back to the original formula that dispensed real happiness and fulfillment through an innate faith in everything that was perceptibly outside of our sphere of influence.
In short – the child - the force that still drives us to play, enjoy, laugh and believe in the best in people – that is real human nature.
It is not human nature to go out and steal, rape, murder, pillage or build a personal empire by preying on those that do not subscribe to this flawed philosophy.
It is not a dog-eat-dog world out there and it is not a jungle – those are all the personal choices of insecure, unbalanced, consumerist-driven individuals who make up a paranoiac society of people who are constantly looking over their collective shoulder.
We have the option to make another choice – all the time.
But which choices do we make?
The choices we know within our being to be the right ones from a spiritually ethical point of view or the ones that will serve us better materially and garner more immediate approval from the consumerist hierarchy we have allowed to judge us?
What’s the honest response if we ask ourselves that question right now?
Whose approval do we actually seek when we make such choices and in which realm does that approval reside?
Do we answer to our personal God or do we answer to the Chief Consumerist Guru within our ambit of influence?
In a world where we have had access to so much information it is easy to see where manipulation has played a part in our evolution particularly with regard to organised religion.
But even so – even if you do believe that your way is the only way, it is a pretty moronic individual who will deny that there are many people out there who do not necessarily agree that this is the case.
And even if these lost souls float in suspended animation for all eternity or until God/Goddess/Allah/Wakan-Tanka/the Great Spirit/the Architect of the Universe – or whatever you elect to call the supreme and divine intelligence in which you believe – chooses to allow them entry to heaven or the state of nirvana or the Happy Hunting Ground or an elevated state of being in the realm of the ascended masters – most of us agree that there may well be something beyond this corporeal entrapment we call life.
And yet we live in a manner that defies every principle we hope to teach our children. We tell them that it is more important to have a good house and a good car, buy the right stuff from the right places, educate their kids at the right schools to become the right person at the right time for the right job…
What the fuck is right?
And how we do misuse the word if it is diametrically opposed to “wrong”. What is wrong with just being happy right here right now for the right reasons that your soul dictates and not for the reasons that are provided through a system of measurement dispensed by a society of brainwashed consumerists?
To cut an already long story short, magazines cater for all three of the three aspects of the abject consumerist but only three of the four aspects of the complete human being.
The physical/material aspects are more than adequately dealt with – this is the basest form of consumerism – sport, nice stuff, good food & grog etc - the ultimate distractions.
The intellectual stimulation is there in many forms – interesting articles, puzzles, a smattering of philosophical copy and a crossover to financial decision making etc.
The emotional probing lurks in the agony columns and studies of relationship interactions and such like.
But in any given magazine that purports to cater for the needs of the modern individual – what is being done about the stimulation of the spirit?
Your horoscope?
Give me a break!
How do the former three aspects fit into the bigger picture, if indeed we agree that there is a bigger picture - and most of us do, I think?
Why is this aspect so conspicuous in its absence?
Doesn’t it sell?
Is it not consumerist enough?
Or are the magazine publishers and editors riding the crest of the wave while selling their consumerist souls down the Rubicon of PW Bothaville to turn a fast buck?
Do magazine editors actually give a fuck about what they dispense or are they powerless to dispense what they would like to?
Is it too controversial?
If so – that’s eminently marketable so this negates a previous query.
Why do contemporary “men’s” magazines not cater for the working man’s soul – we still have them you know?
Why are we so hell-bent (excuse the pun) on avoiding issues that probe the very reason we exist just because it might not fit with the packaged spirituality that we’ve been sold?
What are we so afraid of?
Death? Consumerist failure?
In this, the 21st century are we still buying into that hackneyed siege-mentality that would have us cramming all our consumerist goodies into our consumerist lives just in case some other group belief is right and ours is wrong?
Are we fragile enough, stupid enough and so spiritually insecure that we have to gain Consumerist God’s approval before we shuffle off our mortal coil – just in case?
I guess if people are stupid enough to believe that a 3-bladed disposable shaving system costing around R300 per year while contributing to a massive percentage of solid non bio-degradable pollution is an advanced, intelligent solution to keeping your face smooth, surpassing the cut throat razor that lasts an infinite number of generations – then we are doomed to allow the media and the marketing moguls to think for us forever. Not only do we increase non-biodegradable pollutants immeasurably, we lose a skill into the bargain. It’s called evolution, nay – progress in consumerspeak.
I wonder what they are going to do with our souls when we do move on?
Probably work out a disposable solution to sell on to some other species when they eventually inhabit the earth that we have systematically destroyed by being such clever consumers.
We will then have become the ultimate of the species – we will have consumed ourselves out of existence.
In the words of Roger Waters – “this species has amused itself to death…”
(A satirical look at where we are not)
21st MAY 2001
There are magazines for every aspect of humanity and, as is our choice so often, every aspect of our inhumanity.
In South Africa there is a plethora of men's magazines - some good - some not so good and most of them try and cater for a spread of consumerist needs.
Is that what we are breeding now – is it what we have become - consumers?
Frank Zappa, that marvellous iconoclastic champion of individual freedom, once wrote a diatribe in an album liner note ("Them or Us" was the album, I think), directed against the nation of consumers that the United States has become.
This invective, entitled "Cheese", made me sit up and take note. The similarities between the alleged perceptions and values of the consumerist Americans and those I saw around me in South Africa were marked. Is it a global phenomenon?
Certainly it would be naïve to compare the demographic cross-section of American society with that of South Africa but for a nation that lives in the illusive reality that it has no composite identity, many ethnic groups are embracing an ersatz "culture" based on American consumerism in the misguided belief that it will provide that identity and some sort of essential value system.
This is indeed an indictment on how far we've let our inferiority monkey climb upon our backs - on both sides of the racial spectrum.
And it is a tragic example of our ethnic bereavement and our predilection for anything other than the uniqueness it is our right to claim for ourselves.
Rather than embrace that fledgling New South African ethnicity, it is easier to fall prey to the consumerist disease of wearing the labels of the ultimate marketing machine. The monster that has managed to convince us that we cannot think for ourselves any longer and that distraction into an external system of competitive measurement is the best way to pad our spiritual and moral rectitude.
Let’s be honest – what contribution has McDonald’s made to you, the planet or anything?
Except perhaps to offer yet another avenue to pursue in the parental abdication department.
I wonder how many parents tell their children of the impact Big Mac cattle grazing is having on our global environment?
I wonder how many parents know?
I wonder how many parents care?
Then we have magazines telling us what to wear, how to wear it, when to wear it and when it’s no longer acceptable to the superior consumerists - when to bin it!
We have magazines that tell us how to pleasure each other, what it is that we should be looking for in our soul mate and what steps to take to advance our chances in the consumerist dialogue with a member of the opposite camp.
That's another thing - it is the media that persists in perpetuating the polarity consciousness that has divided our species for over two thousand years. It is various forms of the media that has taken over from where the priestly misogynists left off. And it is the media that has constantly reinforced the schisms between the genders instead of attempting to point out that while there are obvious differences, we have within us the polarity of both sexes and all the ingredients required with which to attain harmony.
No, the consumerist ideology embraces the ethos of competition. The sexes must compete - it is human nature.
What a load of consummate bollocks!
We have allowed ourselves to become so spiritually disenfranchised that we now let journalists and marketing moguls tell us how to think.
What has happened to the instincts that drove us as children, where contentment was real and a “like totally Zen Happening, man”?
We were happy in the moment without looking for some form of external reward for something we had done.
While sitting in a pile of muddy goo playing with an Action Man doll I experienced some of the happiest moments of my existence.
I was the first boy in my neighbourhood to have a “doll” and I didn’t feel one shred of my sexuality being undermined because of it. On the contrary - I derived pure, absolute and pure enjoyment from it and yet miraculously had no yearning to plunder my sister’s cupboard looking for lingerie to wear, nor was I beset by an overwhelming desire to copulate with members of my own gender persuasion. The experience did not make me “queer” whatever the fuck that means.
Why do we have words like “adulterated” and why is this representative of corruption?
Because as the definition suggests – when something is mixed with the adult influence – it loses its purity – it becomes adulterated.
The macrocosmic personification of this “adulterated” society is the consumerist culture.
We do not have to become naïve to become more pure again; we just have to go back to the original formula that dispensed real happiness and fulfillment through an innate faith in everything that was perceptibly outside of our sphere of influence.
In short – the child - the force that still drives us to play, enjoy, laugh and believe in the best in people – that is real human nature.
It is not human nature to go out and steal, rape, murder, pillage or build a personal empire by preying on those that do not subscribe to this flawed philosophy.
It is not a dog-eat-dog world out there and it is not a jungle – those are all the personal choices of insecure, unbalanced, consumerist-driven individuals who make up a paranoiac society of people who are constantly looking over their collective shoulder.
We have the option to make another choice – all the time.
But which choices do we make?
The choices we know within our being to be the right ones from a spiritually ethical point of view or the ones that will serve us better materially and garner more immediate approval from the consumerist hierarchy we have allowed to judge us?
What’s the honest response if we ask ourselves that question right now?
Whose approval do we actually seek when we make such choices and in which realm does that approval reside?
Do we answer to our personal God or do we answer to the Chief Consumerist Guru within our ambit of influence?
In a world where we have had access to so much information it is easy to see where manipulation has played a part in our evolution particularly with regard to organised religion.
But even so – even if you do believe that your way is the only way, it is a pretty moronic individual who will deny that there are many people out there who do not necessarily agree that this is the case.
And even if these lost souls float in suspended animation for all eternity or until God/Goddess/Allah/Wakan-Tanka/the Great Spirit/the Architect of the Universe – or whatever you elect to call the supreme and divine intelligence in which you believe – chooses to allow them entry to heaven or the state of nirvana or the Happy Hunting Ground or an elevated state of being in the realm of the ascended masters – most of us agree that there may well be something beyond this corporeal entrapment we call life.
And yet we live in a manner that defies every principle we hope to teach our children. We tell them that it is more important to have a good house and a good car, buy the right stuff from the right places, educate their kids at the right schools to become the right person at the right time for the right job…
What the fuck is right?
And how we do misuse the word if it is diametrically opposed to “wrong”. What is wrong with just being happy right here right now for the right reasons that your soul dictates and not for the reasons that are provided through a system of measurement dispensed by a society of brainwashed consumerists?
To cut an already long story short, magazines cater for all three of the three aspects of the abject consumerist but only three of the four aspects of the complete human being.
The physical/material aspects are more than adequately dealt with – this is the basest form of consumerism – sport, nice stuff, good food & grog etc - the ultimate distractions.
The intellectual stimulation is there in many forms – interesting articles, puzzles, a smattering of philosophical copy and a crossover to financial decision making etc.
The emotional probing lurks in the agony columns and studies of relationship interactions and such like.
But in any given magazine that purports to cater for the needs of the modern individual – what is being done about the stimulation of the spirit?
Your horoscope?
Give me a break!
How do the former three aspects fit into the bigger picture, if indeed we agree that there is a bigger picture - and most of us do, I think?
Why is this aspect so conspicuous in its absence?
Doesn’t it sell?
Is it not consumerist enough?
Or are the magazine publishers and editors riding the crest of the wave while selling their consumerist souls down the Rubicon of PW Bothaville to turn a fast buck?
Do magazine editors actually give a fuck about what they dispense or are they powerless to dispense what they would like to?
Is it too controversial?
If so – that’s eminently marketable so this negates a previous query.
Why do contemporary “men’s” magazines not cater for the working man’s soul – we still have them you know?
Why are we so hell-bent (excuse the pun) on avoiding issues that probe the very reason we exist just because it might not fit with the packaged spirituality that we’ve been sold?
What are we so afraid of?
Death? Consumerist failure?
In this, the 21st century are we still buying into that hackneyed siege-mentality that would have us cramming all our consumerist goodies into our consumerist lives just in case some other group belief is right and ours is wrong?
Are we fragile enough, stupid enough and so spiritually insecure that we have to gain Consumerist God’s approval before we shuffle off our mortal coil – just in case?
I guess if people are stupid enough to believe that a 3-bladed disposable shaving system costing around R300 per year while contributing to a massive percentage of solid non bio-degradable pollution is an advanced, intelligent solution to keeping your face smooth, surpassing the cut throat razor that lasts an infinite number of generations – then we are doomed to allow the media and the marketing moguls to think for us forever. Not only do we increase non-biodegradable pollutants immeasurably, we lose a skill into the bargain. It’s called evolution, nay – progress in consumerspeak.
I wonder what they are going to do with our souls when we do move on?
Probably work out a disposable solution to sell on to some other species when they eventually inhabit the earth that we have systematically destroyed by being such clever consumers.
We will then have become the ultimate of the species – we will have consumed ourselves out of existence.
In the words of Roger Waters – “this species has amused itself to death…”
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