The New Futile System

A paragraph from Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project)

What remains of democracy is the right to choose among commodities. Business leaders have long explained the need to impose on the population a "philosophy of futility" and "lack of purpose in life," to "concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that compromise much of fashionable consumption." Deluged by such propaganda from infancy, people may then accept their meaningless and subordinate lives and forget ridiculous ideas about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate to corporate managers and the PR industry and, in the political realm, to the self-described "intelligent minorities" who serve and administer power.
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My Take On the Matter
From the moment children in the United States can comprehend their surroundings they are bombarded with advertisements for toys, junk food, video games, movies, and on and on and on. When I was a child there were few commercials that so relentlessly targeted children. The mindset of my parent’s generation was one of moderation. My family of six wasn’t destitute but we children knew that other than rare occasions such as Christmas or a Birthday we would not get gifts. Junk food too was a treat doled out along the same moderate guidelines. We rarely had Coke or sugar coated cereal and if we did we burned it off playing outside. I can think of only a few fat kids that I went to school with threw my entire career in public schools and even these were not morbidly obese like some of the children I see today.

At the age of nine I remember wanting a new bike because mine had been a hand me down from an older neighbor and was getting rusty and worn out and it was PURPLE! To my chagrin I didn’t get the black dirt bike I saw in the Sears catalog. Instead, my mother and father bought me a new dirt bike seat, handlebar grips, handlebars and paint and together we fixed up my bike. Could they have afforded a new bike? Probably but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I didn’t need a new bike mine was fine, it got me around. Did I feel less fulfilled because I didn’t have the new bike? I might have been slightly disappointed but I was too busy being a kid to dwell on it. I found happiness in other things; sports, reading, playing games, exploring the world, not in “fashionable consumption.” My generation had not yet equated consumption with happiness because the PR industry and corporate managers had not yet waged war against our consumer souls.

Worrying about the newest trends as a child takes the fun out of being a child. Mindless hours playing video games and stuffing their faces with ice-cream are not substitutes for the feeling one gets when they hit a homerun in a baseball game or when they’re reading a book that is so good they can’t put it down. I remember a lot of books that gave me that feeling and a lot of homeruns I hit but I don’t hold one memory of playing a video game and having the same feeling elicited.

I feel bad for kids today because they are victims of a system and government that does not have their best interests in mind. They don’t get to truly enjoy what it is like not to have worries. Should a five year old really have to fret over the fact that she doesn’t have a pair of Nike sneakers? I would think not but you know that there is an epidemic of children out there that do worry about such matters. Is it a wonder that so many people are depressed in this day and age? How do we combat these blues? How about prescription drugs! That is a topic for an entirely different article but is more evidence of government’s close relationship with corporate America.

I am thankful for my childhood of moderation. To this day I rarely eat junk food and although I have fallen victim to some of the PR industries gimmicks (I do have a book buying habit, which as far as habits go I guess isn’t too bad.), I haven’t mortgaged my life away so I can have a Hummer and stainless steel kitchen appliances.

Is it possible today even with good parenting for children not to fall prey to this trend of consumption? I would hope so but admittedly it is a hard battle for parents to wage. They are up against industries that spend billions of dollars to suck their kids in to the buying machine. I don’t envy their job.

As we grow older the insatiable quest for consumption is fed by the credit card companies, who feed our addiction for the product advertisements we are inundated with. They know we’re addicted to buying and they feed off of us and it is obvious from the passing of the bankruptcy reform bill (which benefits credit card companies only and not the people of this country that it is supposed to protect) that government is complicit in the feeding of our buying addiction and with the passing of the legislation has effectively ensured that some portion of credit card debt will have to be paid back and a “clean slate” will be much harder to come by. People will effectively become indentured servants to these credit card companies and the credit card companies will thrive as quality of life continues to decline. Does this sound hopeless? It sure does to me.

I for one want my life back. It is not hopeless and I do believe I control my own destiny and I have started to curb my spending. Freedom from the oppression of “intelligent minorities” and their greed is a matter of choice and while I still have choice I chose not to support them like the mindless consumer they believe me to be.