Dec 1, 2007 11:09:46 PM cite

Hi Siri, At some level we all know that consumerism, particularly at its most crass, deadens our souls. Take for example, the case of the woman in this week's City Pages who goes to the Mall of America four times per week and spends approximately $100,000 there a year. (http://articles.citypages.com/2007-11-28/news/the-full-moa/) She admits that when she returns home she has terrible buyer's remorse. We recognize that there is a sickness in her, but we worry that the sickness may be in all of us. What I wonder about is the difference between consumptive behavior and purchasing beautiful things. For some who live in a country that is rising out of poverty, a refrigerator is a beautiful thing, proudly decorated and displayed in the main room rather than the kitchen. After the refrigerator comes the TV, and then the whole panoply of consumer goods we all "need". What are the factors that delineate between crass consumerism and acquiring beautiful things? Mass production? Quality? Quantity? Good taste? I just returned from a trip to India, where I sat on a bus next to an Indian man who told me that in his culture life is traditionally viewed in stages, with the last one involving the shedding of earthly acquisitions. We were discussing the phenomenon of ascetics, who are widely respected and given alms by people in hopes of bringing themselves good karma. He reminded me that Gandhi at one stage of his life was a wealthy lawyer, who in the latter stages of life ascribed to the virtues of asceticism. It makes sense to me to view life in stages, where it is acceptable to acquire things at one stage but where it is virtuous to shed those things towards the end of life. In my own life, I generally feel pretty happy about the purchase of things I love - art, good books (including yours), well made gardening tools, and even a beautiful pair of Italian shoes. But I also sometimes feel guilty, both about my privilege and the fact that I don't need to consume all that I do. My hope is that I am thoughtful in my purchases and resistant to impulses to buy based on advertising messages, but it isn't easy to resist the constant verbal and visual cues of culture. I grant myself a certain amount of acceptance of how I live, surrounded by some beautiful things. I recently asked a friend of mine who is an old Tibetan lama whether I am doing wrong and he said, not at all, but try to remember to be generous and give alms. That seems to me a practical, workable solution, and one that lifts the spirit. Your old pal - Laura

by laura.danielson

Sep 18, 2006 8:35:51 AM cite

Hello Siri, the marketing methods on the market live trough there promise to simplify the world- less struggling , less conflicts ... we all desire illusions - dont we .. but here is hope.. consumer who are aware that there are citizens as well - begin to organize themselves and raise there voice it s amazing which variety of communites is on the way in the area of living, secuirty, working , health- you are inetrested in more details? ciao patricia

by patriciavonpapstein

Sep 17, 2006 12:56:42 AM cite

Consumer culture is influenced in two distinct ways, the first is by the shear barrage of similar types of products that appear after a trend appears from one source. An example of this is when high end automakers [divisions of multi-layered multinational corporations] started producing slate gray automobiles , the lower echelon followed suit leaving consumers with the impression that with a continuity of colour came a corresponding continuity of quality. The other way trends occur is best described by Malcom Gladwell in The Tipping Point, ISBN ? 03 16346 624 where a trend starts as a cult following and then become a fad.

by RedSevenOne

Sep 10, 2006 8:00:32 AM cite

By understanding THAT our values and thinking are constructed and therefore in itself not the truth and subject to chnage, you open the door to questioning your own needs, wants and behaviour. An open mind will lead you to the willingness to understand the how, because it helps to understand also how to change your present values and thinking. The question why you do something and asking yourself what are the consequences is a guide along the way. There are many different layers you need to get through, many things you take for granted which do not exist, many things you now appreciate but are not true, but ultimately this is the only path to understand who you are. Since this path is not easy, is challenging and sometime painful, escape into simple realities remains a risk.

by hendrik@druknet.bt

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva: This question is like question 71. I don't watch television a lot. I don't need it because my life is so rich because I contact with people. And this project "Dropping Knowledge" is the possibility to meet so many dífferent people. I am working with the World Wisdom Council and it's so fantastic because every time when I meet these people and speak with them it seems to me as if I am drinking "alive" water. I get so much energy and new ideas for my work. I continue my work and I do my work and I bring people positive energy and laughing. I don't read many magazines - social magazines or yellow press - only if I go to the doctor. Every time, when I sit in anteroom and wait for gynaecologist I read these newspapers and it makes me aggressive because we have a lot of bad instincts. Of course, there are some good magazines that present objective points of view or give information about other countries, about culture of other countries. But most of magazines make us aggressive, they are primitive. You must have this, you must have that. OK, but it is your decesion whether to read this magazine or not. You don´t need to sit the whole time in the anteroom of gynaecologist and read these papers. We have so many possibilities, we have so many fantastic books, we have so good artists, we have good films, really good films. I am from Russia and we have fantastic culture, theatre culture and cinema culture.We have films which develop and touch our soul without only saying you must have this or that. We, people, don't need anythíng. We need only ourselves, we need love, we need to be loved and we need to learn how to love. It's very, very difficult I learn it every day. I try to learn it every day. I don't try enough, I cannot say I grow up enough.

by Antoschka - Ekaterina Moshaeva

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Abbas Beydoun: This question could also belong to the first question. The point is how life can be faked because of the media and TV which address the naive member in the family. The media and The TV culture is no longer individualism-culture or culture shock as Briton said. Now it is possible to simplify the shock practically into goods, and also the culture was gradually changed into kind of general culture which is determined by the buyer and the producer, and the culture makers will change into instruments for the buyer and the producer. Now we can imagine a world which can be faked or manufactured and can be also governed by market laws. This is terrifying thing, because after the individualism age when people could impose themselves we came back to the collective age, the soviet culture age or Stalin age.

by Abbas Beydoun

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Alvaro Restrepo: Everything can be bougth and everything can be sold. Culture is also getting an object of consume. I don’t think that it is necessarily negative that we can consume. But we have lost the significance of qualitiy of what we consume. In this society people count more for what they have got and not for whon they are. That’s why also the cultural and espiritual production is getting a mean of consume. It is possible to buy it and to sell it. And we don’t produce because of pleasure of creating or because of the necessity of pervading or communicating with other dimensions. Many times we create something in order to sell it and in order to negotiate.

by Alvaro Restrepo

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Ana Lucy Bengochea: If any culture is / belongs to a true culture, the sense of commerce (to buy and sell things) can’t be given to the fore / to special emphasis. A culture is transfer[r]ed by the knowledge given from generations to generations. You can’t speak about culture and there won’t be any tradition, if there aren’t any values and any spiritualism. Children transfer culture to their parents, parents to nephews and nephews to the [hole] generation. A lot of people want to make business of the culture. It isn’t possible to allow this. We, as a indigenous/native population, have protected our culture and we continue to go this way. We’ve obtained a price from the UNESCO. [In this way we will preserve it].

by Ana Lucy Bengochea

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Angaangaq Lyberth: Answertext will be available soon.

by Angaangaq Lyberth

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Anthony Arnove: We are bombarded with messages from consumer culture and those are ideological messages, they are messages that tell us how we are supposed to live our lives, what our values should be, what men should be, what women should be, what our sexuality should be, what our lives should be. And what’s important is that those messages go against the lived experience of the lives of so many people, the values of so many people, and that people are constantly actually resisting those images. But, often people feel that they are somehow beyond the norm, they are outside of the values of the society by having that experience of contradiction. And really, we have to give people more of a sense of their own ability to reject those images, to rebuke those attempts to impose those norms on us, and to create a challenge to the ideologies of consumer culture, to challenge the ideologies that are reproduced through advertising in particular in our society, and to confront the sexism, the racism, the homophobia, the ideologies of passivity and consumerism and the individualism that are inculcated in the media. But, really, I am encouraged that those values are so at odds actually with the interests and aspirations and values of so many people that in fact consumer culture is not nearly as effective as it would like to be, as it thinks it is in being able to influence and shape our decisions and values. And so, there is a real basis for believing that we can challenge it.

by Anthony Arnove

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Anuradha Koirala:

by Anuradha Koirala

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Anuradha Mittal:

by Anuradha Mittal

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Ashok Gangadean: It’s a very profound question. And for me again, it is the question. Because the main question before us now in culture is the culture that’s ego-acentric and ego-based and produces commodities. And in fact make us ourselves objects and commodities that can be bought and sold and put a price upon. We loose a sense of what a sacred person is. And global culture, awakened culture, global spirituality, teaches us as each of us is not a commodity, not a thing, not an object. Buddhist’s wisdom, for example, teaches it’s a profound mistake to think of us as an ego entity or an object or a being. We are an energy field part of the sacred ecology. And when we enter into that kind of consciousness, we see that the old ego-based consumer culture that permeates every aspect of our lives, our education, our culture, seeps through us in every way. And so, it’s hard to get away from that commoditization making ourselves objects and commodities of the marketplace. So what's behind this question? It's the ego-based culture again, in contrast to the awakened integral holistic culture that recognizes our sacred integral nature with all of the ecology. And that's really what this question is very nicely bringing out. Can we shift from a consumer-based to a consciousness-based, awakened consciousness-based, culture, in which we can really realize ourselves and that we are sacred beings rather than commodities and objects that can be treated and objectified?

by Ashok Gangadean

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Audrey Kitagawa: Because I believe that public relations firms have firmly understood the susceptibility of people to be influence and persuaded by how they fashion products to become appealing, to become desirable, to become the basis of positive self-esteem, but it is very much wrapped in a whole culture and mind-set of materiality as a way of moving through the world powerfully, moving through the world as a person of worth, that worth being defined by the expensive clothes you wear, the expensive car you drive, the expensive lifestyle that you have, the expensive vacations that you take, and so to the extent that this constant infusion says this is a value, this defines your worth as a human being, so the more you can acquire these things, the more valuable you are, the more your life is worth, reduces it to a material level. And so we constantly strive to be able to acquire these things and think that this is where our happiness lies, this is where our sense of importance lies, and that is a tremendous distortion that is being created, that ultimately leaves us in a greater state of isolation, loneliness, and a loss of values that will ultimately enhance our lives, that be well grounded in our sense of spirituality as opposed to materiality, and this is where the shift needs to take place. But it is also incumbent upon each and every one of us to take responsibility to see how we need to find our own values within ourselves, that we're not going to be impressed upon us from the outside by public relations firms that try to demonstrate the value of our lives to be within the material realm and framework.

by Audrey Kitagawa

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Avi Primor: I think the main problem is the uniformity. Yes, that's due to advertising. I'm always stunned when I see English advertising in European television. European television transmitters like Euronews or others always speak English when they advertise something. What does that mean? That's uniformity. If we get used to that we will really become standardized and boring. We would all have the same culture or the same low level of culture. We will be poorer. I think we can't really resist because advertising and the globalization are getting stronger. That is why we have to insist to preserve our local culture. That is possible. We just need the will to do that. You don't need to fight against advertising, the efficiency of the world economy or the global industry. They have some advantages. At the same time you have to care about the local culture and traditions. I think this is about the quality of our lives.

by Avi Primor

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Benjamin Fahrer: Again in the consumer culture it’s about programming and conditioning, conditionment. We’re all the same, we’re just conditioned differently. We’re all the same part of humanity, but we’re just conditioned in a different way. In consumer culture, we are influenced by this visual and verbal culture, that is always reducing in simple fine reality and there’s something that can be easily bought and sold. It seems that way to me too. It’s sad, sad to think about it. It becomes a part of us when we allow it to be. How do we resist? Ask yourself. We all have different ways of resistance, devotion, faith into what we know is true, and what can help us become better humans, better people. And I highly doubt that means being a better consumer. It'd be better if you buy more. Remember, everything’s on sale. Everything's on sale! Just buy more, business as usual. Don’t reduce and simplify reality, reduce and simplify your consumption.

by Benjamin Fahrer

Sep 9, 2006 3:55:00 PM cite

Benson Venegas: Yes. We really have to change this culture. The importance of changing this culture is evident and fundamental. The question is already part of the answear and it says that this culture really has visual elements that stay in the mind of the consumer and that tell him to buy and to sell. This leads to a compulsive and negative behaviour and consequently people only want to buy and want to have things at the lowest price and as much things as possible. This can affect our perspective of reality concerning the way we want to live and it may affect our perspective of culture. We can resist to this if we be responsable as consumers and use our buying power in a responsable way to see the relation between what we buy and where and how it is produced. This could help us to see the relation between buying and selling products and the fact that sometimes there is a culture of consume.

by Benson Venegas