Posts Tagged ‘consumerism’

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="480" caption="Image courtesy of Smells Like e-Bizness"][/caption]

The recent upheaval of the world economic markets has been as confusing as it has been severe. Massive amounts of money, debt and uncertainty flood the markets and the lives of us all. People turn to “experts” from many fields such as economics, finance, politics, defense, sociology and others. We want to know how this happened and how it will end. The problem is that these experts are not much help. As Chris Hedges describes in his brilliant post, The Idiots Who Rule America, the experts are a product of the broken system and can no more fix it that a flat tire can change itself.

Since the experts have yet to prove themselves useful, I have decided to look elsewhere for answers. I went to the people that know nothing about economics. People like you and me. I went to the water cooler at my office, in the break room and interviewed people there.

The question is everywhere: “How did all of this happen?” The economy. The endless war. The National Debt. All of it. Some people ask the question differently: “What were we thinking?” “Who’s responsible?”

I think that we have two problems. First, we don’t like bad news. Especially the really big, awful bad news that depresses us when we are confronted with big problems. War, poverty, disease, famine, economics etc. The general population has no idea how to manage global or national problems. Most of us are not skilled in these issues. So, when confronted by these issues, we “stick our heads in the sand” and try to forget.

The population of this planet is driven by Consumer Capitalism, which is a linear (infinite) system on a finite planet. The engine of our economy is consumption and waste, which would be great if we lived on a conveyer belt instead of a single planet. Very simply put, we are bred like livestock. Our only value is our ability to consume. The flow of money from our pockets into the hands of our governments and corporations is the sum total of how we are defined. How much money can they take from us today? How much money can they take tomorrow? That’s it.

We exist as financial livestock. We create wealth in large numbers just as cattle create beef in large numbers. Our homes are basically luxury livestock pens. Our government and the corporations that control it exist only to take our money. They seek to influence every aspect of what we do in every moment of our lives – solely to get us to spend money. We are encouraged to debt at every turn, thus placing ourselves in a position of indentured servitude. This we are told that the items we consume will make us happy. We are cash making cows being herded and branded.

We can’t consume our way out of this mess.