I never get tired of harping about consumer-capitalism

[darkelf105]

From Commodify Your Dissent (which a great book of essays from the Baffler):

"What Earl Shorris has written of the early promise of TV may finally be accomplished in the near future: 'Reality did not cease to exist, of course, but much of what people understood as reality, including virtually all of the commercial world, was mediated by television. It was as if a salesman had been placed between Americans and life." Tv is no longer merely "entertainment", it is on the verge of becoming the ineluctable center of the human consciousness, the site of every sort of exchange. As the Information Revolution proceeds the myths, assumptions, and folklores of business become the common language of humanity; business culture becomes human culture. Working and consuming from our houses, wired happily into what Harper's magazine call the "electronic hive", we will each be corporate subjects--consumers and providers of "content"--as surely as were the hapless proletarians of the last century."

Again, I don't mean to be elitist, but when I read something like that, and a light bulb of recognition blooms in my head, I have to share. We are becoming consumers. We have given up our humanity, our culture, and our society in the pursuit of the perfect, well anything. In an age where even our bodies are no longer sacred (unhappy with that chub, suck it out, everyone should look like a rock star), the last places of freedom are our thoughts, the vast open plains and horizons or our minds and imaginations, and corporate America would like very much to be able to place ads there. I think we need to stop and reevaluate (ironic I am using business speak, see how insidious?) and remember what it is to life, not just buy.  


P.S.S. if you have no idea what I'm talking about, read Fahrenheit 451.

Comments

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I have read Fahrenheit 451, but it has been quite a while. I'm pretty sure I understand what you are saying though.

You're line about sucking out the fat reminds me of an odd short story I read in junior high. (I wish I knew what book it was from.) But there were machines that collected the fat and for ever 5-10? pounds you had a little blue dot put on your wrist. Some people made intricate designs and such out of them. I dunno, kinda rambly, but it was one of those images that has really stuck with me.