The brain-wasting disease called consumerism ......

[marmar]

Last edited Fri Nov 23, 2012, 10:46 PM - Edit history (1)

[font size="4"]"The goal for the corporations is to maximize profit and market share. And they also have a goal for their target, namely the population. They have to be turned into completely mindless consumers of goods that they do not want. You have to develop what are called 'Created Wants'. So you have to create wants. You have to impose on people what's called a Philosophy of Futility. You have to focus them on the insignificant things of life, like fashionable consumption. I'm just basically quoting business literature. And it makes perfect sense. The ideal is to have individuals who are totally disassociated from one another. Whose conception of themselves, the sense of value is just, 'how many created wants can I satisfy?' We have huge industries, public relations industry, monstrous industry, advertising and so on, which are designed from infancy to mold people into this desired pattern."[/font]

-- Noam Chomsky

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[limpyhobbler]

2. LOL post of the day

[loudsue]

3. Other countries must look at the USA and get nauseated.

This is embarrassing to me. What is wrong with people?

[slackmaster]

27. Other countries have their own embarrassments

[femmocrat]

4. I don't get it either.

I saw a woman on the local news who said she bought 6 televisions last year and they are still in the boxes. Huh? Yes, she was out there again this year. Probably bought another TV, but they didn't say.

So many of the shoppers said it was a "tradition". I don't get that either, sorry.

[tblue]

7. That sounds like an illness.

Man, that's creepy to me.

[CrispyQ]

22. Sounds like a hoarder.

We have hoarders across the street. Some govt agency has stepped in to help cuz there is a small child in the house. The neighbors a few doors down called on them when they had four cars that wouldn't run, parked in our small cul-de-sac, because the garage & driveway are full of stuff.

I think my sister is a hoarder, but she has the money to pay for storage bins to hide her obsession. It slipped out one day when I told her I'd gotten rid of my storage bin & cleaned out my basement & felt so much better! She said she'd probably die with her two bins & hoped it wasn't more by then.

There is a book called "Affluenza: The All Consuming Epidemic" that is pretty good. It's got several excellent Horsey cartoons in it, so I think it's worth it for that alone! But it addresses how we got to where we are with consumerism. It certainly gave me food for thought.

http://www.amazon.com/Affluenza-All-Consuming-Epidemic-John-Graaf/dp/1576751996/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353777021&sr=1-2&keywords=affluenza

[undeterred]

5. You have to make people feel like they are out of it if they don't

have an iphone.

[aletier_v]

15. bad example. I ignored my friend's suggestion to buy an iphone

for several months.

But now, four years later,
I have to admit it's probably the single most useful gadget I own.

Having three iphones is a sickness, not one.

[this is temporary.]

38. But I AM out of it!

I am out of the bullshit Facebook highschool mentality!

[tblue]

6. Doing my best to stay off the mouse wheel.

Great post! Very wise and needs to go viral. Chomsky is always spot on.

I hate malls anyway and my kid has internalized that sentiment.

[Care Acutely]

8. K & R

[Carolina]

9. K&R

[L0oniX]

10. "THE EEEE VILE ...MICKEY MOUSE!"

[triplepoint]

11. That's One Way to Lose Some Weight....

Last edited Sat Nov 24, 2012, 12:12 AM - Edit history (1)

.
.
.

[bearssoapbox]

12. The wife and I are staying home from wednesday to monday

No shopping, not even online. A few friends and family over on Thanksgiving and the rest of the weekend is ours.
Not that we planned it that way, it just worked out like that.
Starting Monday though, to the end of the year it is nonstop.
She has doctors appointments every week until January and we are in a flea market every weekend, in Winchester, IN until the weekend before Christmas.
And during this weekend I have to get the car and van ready for winter but to me that's not really work.
I'm glad most of our shopping is done.
The best present will be if the doctors news about my wife turns out to be good. We won't know until sometime around Christmas.

[lunatica]

26. I hope your wife's good health is your Christmas present

[Initech]

13. What's even more embarrassing is the violence associated with Black Friday.

Really America has just turned into this bizarre third world consumer plantation.

[lunatica]

28. Third world is probably the wrong thing to call it

It's mostly a really bizarre depiction of a country who's citizens can be considered more consumers than anything else. I think we're making history regarding that. I can't think of any other country, and certainly not third world that does anything like this.

It's insane.

[loudsue]

33. Too much "reality Teevee".

Emulating sicko behavior designed to entertain.

[zeemike]

14. Yep some of our fellow peps have gone mad.

Or as someone above has said, have an illness....cause this kind of behaviour is not normal.

[reACTIONary]

16. You've got to FIGHT! For your RIGHT! To BUY!! BUY, BUY, BUT or DIE, DIE, DIE !!!

Sorry. Just got back from the mall. It seems to have affected me...

[ReRe]

17. My mind immediately jumps to...

K&R

"brain dead", the Republicon' base, etc. But what this is a picture of is the final effect of "cheap labor" which has been and is being perpetrated upon The People of this country. The majority of these people don't make a living wage. The lady that someone mentioned above who bought TVs that she didn't want or need is just plain greedy. But the others probably save up all year for Black Friday, for this one day of the year. I would think that the Fire Marshall's would step in the middle of Wal-Mart or other big-box stores that encourage this by requiring the store only allow so many people in at a time. Put a limit of the number of items they could buy and them have them check out. Say 3 items, then check out. If they want more, then they have to go to the end of the line outside and wait their turn again. This is a public safety issue, for Pete's sake! Was it last year or the year before when people were trampled to effing death?? There are no words...it's a Mad World.

[BlueStreak]

18. I am thinking a lot more about quality these days

I just have little use for the mass market crap that you find in the Big Boxes.

Some of the happiest people I know have small simple apartments, basic furniture, and simple wardrobe, and an interesting lifestyle. They go to plays, concerts, nice restaurants, but just don't have any need to fill their lives with crap.

Awhile back I wanted to get a decent carpet cleaner and I honestly couldn't find one anywhere locally. The stores all had the same low-end garbage that would do a crappy job and break after 4 uses. I ended up buying it from a store 800 miles away. That is really a shame. That is what the big boxes have done to us. There used to be smaller, locally owned stores that would have products like that.

My family has agreed to not buy any gifts this year and just enjoy each other's company. Now there is a gift.

I can barely stand to watch teevee anymore. What do you see today? 24 x 7 coverage of morons fighting each other to load up on complete garbage at the closest big box.

I agreed to participate in a Nielson teevee usage survey this past week. In the entire week, I only logged a couple halves of football games and a few minutes of one of the evening MSNBC programs -- which of course was just babbling on about this horrible "fiscal cliff". I don't need that garbage. Speak the truth or else I am going to turn you off. When it came down to it, there was nothing on teevee worth the effort it would have taken to write it in my Nielson diary.

We need to examine our lives from the ground up.

[CrispyQ]

23. This:

"We need to examine our lives from the ground up."



Everything for profit & pleasure is a superficial way to live.

[lunatica]

29. Congratulations on the no gifts for Christmas choice

I started small too, just telling everyone not to get me anything for my birthday. Now, my small family doesn't do any holidays or birthdays other than very small celebrations of a nice meal and or taking in a movie if there's one worth watching. No gifts, no cards, no nada. It's amazing how easy it is once you start stopping the rat race. All it takes is knowing that you have a choice to tell corporations that you're done with their manipulating you through guilt into buying things. It doesn't take things to show people you love them.

[BlueStreak]

32. And what is wrong with expecting a retail industry to meet our needs 365 days a year?

Yes, there is some seasonal hiring, but they are mostly not very good jobs that have no future.

If everybody said "shove it" to this artificial charity (it isn't giving when it is expected of you), people would still buy the things they really need all throughout the year. What is wrong with that? It seems to me it is a sick society that demands its subject engage in a shopping frenzy based on an artificial calendar.

I am an atheist, but that really isn't relevant to anything. There is nothing at all religious about this shopping frenzy, and if you want to get technical about it, Jesus was born in the springtime (based on the scripture, that's when the newborn sheep would be tended by the shepherds) and the early Catholics appropriates the winter solstice because they couldn't stand to see the Pagans having such a good time with their secular festival. They tried to do the same thing with Halloween (calling it All Saints Day), but that failed.

Every Christian, Jew, and Muslim should stand up and say "enough of this rapid consumerism. It violated several of the 10 Commandments, namely: 'You shall have no other gods before me.' and 'You shall not covet ... anything that is your neighbor's"

[just1voice]

19. Rec'd, your posts are my favorite marmar

Thought I'd throw a compliment in someone's direction since it's a holiday weekend! I did shop yesterday, went to the local farmers market and got some food.

[marmar]

37. Thanks for that.....I too went to the Farmer's Market today

........ and that's all the shopping I plan on doing this weekend.

[dkf]

20. Phones are a big deal. Ask someone whose phone has just died and see if they miss it or not.

Grandma and grandpa with flip phones maybe not. But anyone with a smart phone is LOST.

[totodeinhere]

24. We did just fine for years and years before cell phones were even invented.

But now they are indispensable? I don't think so. I don't have a cell phone and I do just fine thank you very much.

[bvar22]

25. This is a perfect example of a "created need".

From the OP:
" The ideal is to have individuals who are totally disassociated from one another. Whose conception of themselves, the sense of value is just, 'how many created wants can I satisfy?"

Twitter, FaceBook, etc is NOT "Social Media".
It is Anti-Social Media.

[dkf]

42. Does DU create people disassociated from one another?

Is DU a created need?

My phone is my access to DU so I see them as the same thing.

If you realize that, then this post is pretty ironic.

[Skittles]

41. hilarious, isn't it?

the worst part is these cretins cannot even stay away from their obsession with their hand-helds for 90 minutes during a fucking movie

[Skittles]

40. that is just fucking sad

[Fire Walk With Me]

21. Amen.

[snagglepuss]

30. .

[arcane1]

31. I love Star Trek, but the whole "memorabilia" thing is one of the worst examples of this.

The willful purchasing of manufactured items made in sweatshops out of petroleum and electronics, with the sole intention of never taking them out of the box. I don't get it

I've purchased a few things like tree ornaments over the years, but at least they got used from time to time. For me, the product's value was in the product itself, not in its potential resale/trade value. I suppose it can be seen as a fun and enjoyable form of investing, but it seems so wasteful too.

[SomethingFishy]

36. I think now people do it for investments...

Had I known what my toys, comics, and baseball cards would be worth I might have kept some in a box too...

That said, I understand where you are coming from. Someone upthread said it's like being in a 3rd world country but in 3rd world countries they fight over food and water while we are wrestling over a cheap Xbox...

[Blue Owl]

34. Can't fix stupid, but you can fix prices

n/t

[SheilaT]

35. It's no wonder so many people are in serious debt.

They've been convinced that they need all sorts of things that they really do not need.

Watching TV is the worst thing you can do for yourself. The commercials are nonstop. The message is invariably that the more things you have the happier, prettier, smarter, more fit, more popular you'll be.

I don't own a TV, and watch what I want on the internet. The very few commercials I see there are easy to ignore, and I never see political ads or the current Christmas shopping ones. Yesterday I stopped over to feed the cat of an out-of-town friend, and sat for a while to keep the cat company. So I turned on the TV. I do believe more time is spent on the commercials than on any of the programming. At least the Home Shopping Network is honest about what it's doing.

I also am constantly astounded at how much some people spend on Christmas gifts, especially when I'm pretty sure the really have less money than I do. Again, debt.

[Skittles]

39. I see it all the time

people who think they are saving money because they got a "half off" a (insert product here), when they did not need the (said product) in the first place. You're not saving money, you're SPENDING money, very often on crap they don't need. These same people will whine about how hard it is to save money.

[99Forever]

43. K&R