Today the subject of consumerism kept popping up. I keep thinking about how circular time is and it seems that throughout history there’s always the examples of great civilizations that meet their demise as soon as the society gets too decadent. Greece, Rome, Roaring Twenties. Good times make weak men etc
But why is that? Consumerism is what the DS uses to hypnotize people, to make them not care about the society they live in, not pay attention to the changes going on around them because they’re too busy caring about themselves.
The more you watch YouTube, the more you start consuming bc these YouTuber reviewers start helping you imagine situations you would be using said items and that’s the thought seed that gets you going and thinking “yea that would be a nice thing to have in case that happens”. Next thing you know you’re obsessed with the item. You’re thinking about it morning, noon and night. Consume consume consume. The average person who is susceptible to this hypnosis is spending his time either working to get the money to buy the thing he wants or spending his time finding the next thing to buy. Where is the time to give a shit about politics? As long as their life is not affected, they won’t unplug.
But a society must reach a certain level of prosperity before consumerism can take place. If society is at a level where you don’t even know if you’ll have a next meal, you wont care about much else and will be very involved in government to demand change.
Therefore the best point to maintain control of a society is to make sure the people have enough money to eat have a place to live and have some spending money. It’s much easier to distract people when they have some money to spend and we’re not talking a whole lot of money just needs to be slightly over “barely surviving”.
Now, you control the media/social media and you basically tell your stars what’s the next big thing for them to focus on.
The extreme preaning of men / feminization of men has happened prior to a civilizations down fall (Greek men and young boys as lovers, Men in drag in the Weimar Republic.
Narcissism also is high in a society before it’s downfall.
Sorry if it’s not very coherent. Just wanted to jot down some random thoughts. I’m sure this isn’t news to anyone but I guess I just never took the time to dissect out all these ideas.
Consumerism, in the way its currently understood - a growth based economy where companies need to keep making more and more revenues (growth) to even stay where they are, require more and more products to be consumed by the population.
The inherent problem is not consumerism per se, but the growth based economy that results in consumerism. Growth based economy can only be sustained if there is an infusion of cash into the economy - essentially its an inflationary economy.
So what we are describing is a central bank fiat currency based pyramid scheme, where more and more money needs to be created out of thin air, ladening our future generations with more and more debt, just to keep the system afloat.
In a production based economy, where focus is on producing real value without exorbitant need for capital, where constant profits are sustainable and stock market is based on dividends and not speculative, you dont need this constant infusion of money, and this system will be either very low inflationary or even deflationary sometimes, and the growth is directly related to population and productivity growth.
This is the system which allows us to live free, but we will most probably be not able to afford new iPads every year and new cars and expensive lifestyles. We also wont have too many millionnaires and no billionnaires.
That definitely makes sense but I’m wondering if competition alone would always drive society towards the growth based economy eventually. There will always be certain personality types that just wants to make more, be more , do more. 🤔