"What consumer culture does is to privatize people. It makes them focus on their own personal well being. And not just material well-being. Why shouldn't people be concerned with their material well being? But they see in acquisition of material goods a kind of self liberation, a kind of upward rise socially, and a kind of freedom. And to the degree that consumer culture captures your imagination, you lose a social imagination. You no longer see yourself as part of some kind of collective."
Steve Fraser on Bill Moyers Journal 6-13-08
You get one chance to be proud. This can elude you, but don't be discouraged. One day, or sleepless night, it may come to you without the slightest provocation. A sense of pride in yourself, your place in society, that has nothing to do with status or consumption. A sense of human worthiness.
Still, trouble will come as messengers barrage you with one request: that you lift a wad of money out of your workshirt, stick it into the seller's fist. Marketeers lavish you with images of actors pretending to be incredibly satisfied with stuff.
Monks and shamans warn against selling your soul for the coinage of the realm. They sound so quaint and angry, quite the opposite of your suave superself out to buy the world and rest content in the lap of acquisition. Now you have your toys and baubles, your sleek car, your sleeker game console. You can live forever in the cosmos of your dreams. The hustlers cherish you you you my child: so important as statistic, insignificant as self.
But are you worthy, sister? Are you satisfied? Do you stealthily resist the huckster parade, blunderbussing you in its tractor beam?
Let the junk mail flutter down the ad soaked street. Let the superheroes flap their capes and flex their talons at your new found sight. Deny them any power to impress you. This is a great day where dead men walk and manic women lay aside their cloaks of unbelonging. Proper ladies take up megaphones to bleat their poetry at the lawless night. Image consultants weep themselves to sleep and the sweet elves of tomorrow tuck them in with fierce communal pride.
