я написал ложь. это, пожалуй, самая прекрасная ложь, которую я когда-либо писал. только переход польской границы чем-то к ней приблизился, но там была идея, а тут уверенность какая-то в собственном пиздеже. энджой.
Anton Drozdov.
Ms. Pastori
sec. #0634
December 09, 2004
“How long is it going to take you to realize that you are nothing more than a consumption machine, that corporations are using your precious lifetime to get richer and richer; that you are their slave?” I hear this every day in lyrics, read it on the screen and in print. It was just a matter of time for me to begin questioning this active propaganda of a popular philosophy of anti-consumerism. In his essay “In Praise of Consumerism,” James B. Twitchell takes an uncommon position. He views consumerism as something positive, an act of good will of the American people. I strongly agree with him on the majority of his points, and find my position to be set even closer to pure consumerism.
The popular viewpoint of the opponents of consumerism is summarized as: “the manipulators, a.k.a. “the culture industry” attempt to enlarge their hegemony by establishing their ideological base in the hearts and pocketbooks of a weak and demoralized populace. Left alone, we would never desire things (ugh!). They have made us materialistic.” (Twitchell, 412). I have a personal story that conveys my view of such tendencies. In 1999, David Fincher made his landmark movie Fight Club. It taught social disobedience to the consumers along with neglect of material possessions. Although the motion picture has never gotten any awards, underground fighting clubs appeared all around the world. The young people saw themselves enlightened. I was one of them.
I bagged my clothing and threw it away, and bought a blanket, six black t-shirts, a pair of pants and a jacket at a military surplus store. This was all of my clothing, “the same until I die,” (Fight Club) just like we were told. My friends and I had fistfights, in which we were trying to find the right and true way of living, to evolve from personal attachment to our possessions. In fierce fights I firstly neglected the most basic and the most loved piece of my physical property – my body, that is, although God-given, can too be perfected with the number of consumer items. By denouncing my body I denounced all the other possessions, which essentially are meant to please it. I did not want to follow the crowd of “normal” teenagers, who suck money out of their parents, and then compete between each other in who is better in depriving their parents from cash. One thing I did not understand than was that I was ultimately a follower and not a leader. All of us young boys with no interests and goals neglected the American dream that our parents dedicated their lives to.
Now, reading Twitchell, I see in full just how wrong I was. I agree with Andrew Sullivan when he says that “citizens...have to figure out the meaning of their own lives, and search for that meaning until the day they die,” (Sullivan, 401) but I did not see it happening in general public in the time of my concentration on Fight Club, when I, along with tens of millions of others, thought that we were suppressed daily and that I was the true intellectual and spiritual revolutionary, who would not live his life in vain in a state of submission to the corporations. I wouldn’t even accept the possibility that although only a few benefit greatly in the age of consumerism, we, the consumers, are the ones in control. We tell the corporations exactly what we want and they give it to us. They are dependant on our will to request possessions. They will turn into dust if we do not want them to make things for us, and other corporations will take their place. They are our millionaire servants.
Tyler Durden, the main character of the book and the movie Fight Club, is saying that we are worthless because we do not live our lives in full, that we live to consume and “work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need,” (Fight Club). After carefully revising my log and Twitchell’s essay, I must say, that this is not necessarily true. We do not have to buy things we do not need. The data from my consumer log shows, that only things on which I spend my money are lunch items at $1.20 per day, and I have not bought anything over $150 (some car parts) in the past year. I do not think that the rest of the people are mindless in the way Durden shows them. I cannot imagine some insane shopper who buys everything he/she sees.
In his essay, Twitchell brings up another good point, when he show how companies sometimes inhibit consumers’ rights to choose: “I am annoyed that Coke has bought the “pouring rights” at my school and is now trying to do the same to the world,” (Twitchell, 413) It is true, sometimes commercials are annoying, but it is our choice to do what we are told. This choice is freedom. In many other non-democratic systems we would have no choice. There would be one brand, the one produced by the government, and we would be truly glad to have even that, because of strong deficit of everything, which usually follows the controlled economies. Soviet Union and North Korea would be great examples. I would rather witness billboards than have no shoes or food to eat like people in those countries did and do, because government forgot to make it or didn’t make enough.
Some people might say that the corporations do not leave us choice of what to buy, and that products are much alike. Knowing that the corporations control fashion trends very keenly, the only logical conclusion from this statement is that the shopper, who states it, wants to buy from these corporations, but doesn’t want to be like everyone else; he/she wants to be in style and different at the same time. There is no way to solve it.
After all, just like Twitchell says, the desire for things is in us. He concentrates our attention on the lack of historic background on the world, those “enlightened” are striving for, and, unknowingly, on unlikeness of Durden’s dream of “people growing corn next to an abandoned freeway” (Fight Club): “there was never society of “noble savages with purely natural needs,” (Twitchell, 413). Programmers and managers will never be spiritually moved deeply enough to grow corn, because they have seen easier life, and because they are humans and not animals, and they want maximum luxury, not just food. Thing we own end up owning us, but we want to be owned by all of the things we are being sold. We want to be able to make it part of our lives, not because we are mindless victims who are led into a trap, but because the feeling of possession is in our genes, and we will not trade riches (or dreams of them) for nothing.
Вложение: 1499161.mp3
