Author Topic: Resistance In Consumerist Society  (Read 6927 times)

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Holden

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  • Hentrichian Philosophical Pessimist
Re: Resistance In Consumerist Society
« on: July 02, 2014, 05:42:43 am »
Hikikomoris..yes ,at least the Japanese have come up with a word for my condition.I don't think there is a succinct word in English for people like me.Social Withdrawal.Consumerism is a disease,why do I need to eat caviar when I can satiate my hunger with lentil( Diogene's favourite).
Why do I need to wear new clothes every day? There are people I know who have literally tons of clothes & I don't think they'd've worn a particular piece of clothing more than once.Why this utter wastage? This conspicuous consumption.?
Marx called it Commodity Fetish.
 To avoid the status anxiety of not being of or belonging to "the right social class", the consumer establishes a personal identity (social, economic, cultural) that is defined and expressed by the commodities (goods and services) that he or she buys, owns, and uses; the domination of things that communicate the "correct signals" of social prestige, of belonging. The Society of the Spectacle is the ultimate form of social alienation that occurs when a person views his or her being (self) as a commodity that can be bought and sold, because he or she regards every human relation as a (potential) business transaction.


What do we  do?

And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables,
And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.