Consumerism

If we deviate from our daily life and see consumerism as something strange - meaning that you have not experienced it before, you will see patterns and trends of this phenomenon happening in this world.

If one starts to have a perspective of not having experienced consumerism at all and sees it as strange, you will start to see alot of things and question why? The easiest source is the media, mainly the TV. When you see advertisements, whether it's from the TV, magazine or in the internet, it acts to entice you to consume.

I think that this has physiological components in it. As we see the advertisements, it fills our senses, thus producing chemical responses that make us feel good, we wont be satisfied until we have the product. However, resources are scarce so we would not be able to have everything. This is the driver of consumerism. Because we cannot have it, we tend to work towards it if our desires are strong. Thus we want more money to be able to have the product or service. Upon having it, our body will experience an initial surge in chemicals that makes us feel good. However, these effects are temporary, therefore we will have to consume again.


This is a continual cycle that cannot be stopped until everyone realise that it is going nowhere. Sklair argued that this cannot be ecologically sustained and it increases class polarisation. Whether it can be ecologically sustained, we cannot see the real effects other than having information that the media is showing to us. Even forecast or any sort of our world have a deviation from the real facts. but by the time we realise that it cannot be sustained, we'll be dead. The irrationality of rationality of the driving force of capitalism makes us see things in the short term. We all want short term gratification and profits. This is where traditional culture must play an important role in moderating the culture-ideology of consumerism.

That is why at this age in the world we as workers are just the "fuel" to run global capitalism. The division of labour is needed to classify us into different categories - some need to be the elite, some need to be workers and some may be left in a state of anomie. However, the allocation of the workforce are basically of random chance - a child born in poverty in africa will most probably remain in poverty not because he lack merits or other is stupid. It is because it is random and cannot be predicted, so he is "unlucky". The lack of the power of knowledge disables him in this capitalistic world. Children born in the elite family will most probably follow the family tradition - this has high probability as the capitalist class holds the power although we cannot experience it. This power is a social fact that we cannot experience it but can be determined by other indicators.