What is it our consumer societies are striving for the most? And before you answer this question keep in mind nobody can really be blamed for doing it for its is culturally instilled in all of our lives. People are programmed to think this way from the day they are born. Children in consumer societies grow up believing its supermarkets that supply their food rather than mother earth. They simply copy their parents behavior and are taught this is how you acquire what you need to be happy and comfortable.
The fact that tons and tons of these food are tossed out to preserve economy and fill the pockets of dangerous multinationals like Monsanto, – these days called Bayer, to make it less visible to the critical public eye,- whose only goal it is to make even more money, is carefully kept out of the ‘how to be happy and have an easy life’ commercials that flood our brains hundreds of times a day without us even noticing it.
Economy has become humanities religion. It has become the prime goal at this time of human evolution. We are brain washed on a daily basis to believe this is the correct way of doing things. We are being kept comfortable and taught it is okay to go about it this way by supplying ease and promoting it as happiness.
In our western consumer society everything is aimed at ease; making yourself comfortable, making sure you’re happy with your life. Everything is aimed at dulling us to sleep by supplying anything we might need to make our life more comfortable; as long as you pay the price. We have fast food to satisfy our instant cravings; we have supermarkets stuffed to the rim with pre-fabricated, pre-packed, pre-shaped foods all to make life easy. O, and we put loads of sugar in it so people become addicted and will buy it again. Yes, we have come a long way from having to pull our own carrots out of the earth.
But what happens when the camera zooms out of all the commercials and zooms into our individual daily lives? Are we really all that much at ease? Are we really all that happy? Do we really reflect what the commercials and reality shows tell us we look like? Does your washing detergent or all inclusive holiday really make life so easy you have nothing to worry about?
The good news as far as I am concerned is people are starting to wake up. A new generation of people, literally, children of the new age; are standing up against the injustice; the uneven ways in which wealth,health, privileges and convenience is really divided.
From an evolutionary point of view its interesting to observe that its a trade war that keeps the world in its grasp at the moment. Funny as it may sound, it might well be just what our consumer societies need to open the eyes to the absurd illusion we live in and wake people up to the fact that ease and convenience are a different thing than happiness.
Ingrid Schippers, 19-08-2018
click the 7 of Challenges card to read more on its meaning
The spoken version of this blog, features as end note on ‘Dutchbuzz’, the radio hour for Internationals every Tuesday from 10 to 11 pm on ‘Den Haag FM and can be found in the Programme Archive of the Dutchbuzz podcasts, dated June 19 , 2018.
