There's a rag-tag, unregimented army of rebels

who are willing to spend their lives proving

that absence of consumer culture

doesn't mean absence of all culture.

The development of real culture

is only possible when we challenge conditioning

and makes demands on ourselves to find

the absolute and unadulterated truth

Real cultural revolution is only possible when

we doubt what we're are told

One of the prime indicators

of Consumer Culture is television

Mega-corporations fight with each other

over the will of the people,

by developing newer and more

captivating advertisements,

by dumbing down plot lines for TV shows

so they capture more viewers,

special interests get their views in

and the public just follows along

Logo Wear Culture

We wander around dressed from head to toe in logo wear and merchandising – walking corporate advertisements, imitating a fifteen second television spot or a half-page magazine spread, silently pledging allegiance to one brand or another.

We must ask ourselves, what is being branded – the product or the person?
Image has replaced value. Convenience has replaced quality. Entertainment has replaced imagination. And everything is entertainment.

In North America, advertising spending has skyrocketed tenfold over the last 25 years; the average person is 10 per cent heavier than in 1970; airplane seats are getting wider; SUVs are getting bigger; children are less active; we watch more TV.

Industries like beauty, tobacco, pharmaceutical, diamond, oil and gas, and processed foods begin to whittle into our psyche at an early age.

Children coerced by cartoon characters pressure parents into purchasing decisions, but teenagers actually have money.

Life as a teenager isn’t easy. There are a lot of changes going on, and sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between real problems and mere inconveniences.

Sexy ads prey on insecurities and praise vanity. At this impressionable age we are fed a steady diet of invented problems and convenient solutions.

This is what we are raised on, so it’s hardly surprising that we grow up with a consumer mentality, willingly becoming a flock of sheep being herded through a pasture of shopping malls and food courts by our mass-marketing keeper.

We give them the power to propagate a societal-vicious circle of desire and consumption to the point where many people define themselves by the brands they buy and equate their intrinsic human value by the status symbols they can afford.

We are at home watching “Must See TV.” The pizza ad comes on. “Hey, not a bad idea. I’m kinda hungry, and I can’t miss a precious second of the same old story to make dinner and do the dishes.”

The antacid ad comes on. “Ooh, maybe I ate that pizza a little too fast. Plop plop, fizz fizz.”

The designer jean ad comes on. “I wish I had a body like that, but what can I do about it?”

The weight-loss ad comes on. “Hey, that’s what I can do about it! Only 30 days, you say?”

Then the pizza ad comes on again. “OK, maybe just one more piece.” The vicious cycle continues.

How closely do we examine labels at the supermarket? Or, do we just go on brand recognition perpetuated by Hollywood product placement, low prices furnished by economies of scale, and high sugar and fat contents (tastes better)?

Do we support multinationals who actively try to transform the cultures of the world into a world culture, making it a very small planet?

Is that diamond ring worth the lost limbs and lost lives of innocent West African children, terrorized by those fighting over our three months’ salary?

As a kid, it was the Pepsi Challenge. You either drank Coke or Pepsi. That’s what defined us. As teenagers, we were defined by the brand of cigarettes we smoked, Player’s or DuMaurier.

As adults, it’s the cars that define us. Either you’re a Ford man or you drive a Chevy, or a Dodge. The ad may sell individualism, but inside the box is only conformity.

This is where the marketeers want us to stay, and to think – inside the box. Let’s live outside it.

Conformity & Consumer Capitalism

There is no doubt that there is a great antagonism against consumer culture on the part of all Leftists.

Our reasoning is simple: there are things in life that have more value, meaning, and purpose than the manufactured products of a lifeless and mechanized society.

Those of us who are convinced of this truth thoroughly enough will do what we can to escape the tyranny that is produced in the corporate-dominated, consumer culture.

Many have escaped to the bosom of nature, taking a Thoreau-like approach to the question of "how should we live life?"

Some have adopted an extremely open and loving sexuality as a means achieving fulfillment in a world that's too afraid to trust good will.

Others have traveled the path of the old psychedelic guru, ingesting mind-altering chemicals as though they were the nutrients necessary for a fully developed and mentally healthy psychology.

We are the artists who spit on artist organizations, the writers who mastermind brilliant ways to break grammar rules, the intoxicated friend at a party who admits what everyone is too afraid to say, the bombers of dams and the conceivers of boycotts; we are everything short of a complete and total revolution.

There's a rag-tag, unregimented army of rebels, who are willing to spend their lives proving that absence of consumer culture doesn't mean absence of all culture.

The development of real culture is only possible when the individual challenges their environment and makes demands on themselves to find the absolute and unadulterated truth -- that is, real cultural revolution is only possible when the individual doubts what they are told.

A fair definition of Consumer Culture would be: relying on the owners of industry to produce for the people the main subject of their lives, that is, producing a culture for the people that revolves around consuming the products of this economy.

The difficulty that many people have with this is that the interests of the ruling class are not quite the same as those of the ruled class. Corporations, such as Starbucks, WalMart, Nike, Adidas, Macintosh, and Shell, all manufacture their products in countries that exploit the working class.

Many of the workers labor twelve to sixteen hour days in dirty, unclean factories, under threat of a violent military regime or the agonizing poverty created by Capitalist, Free Trade, and embargo policies of the United States and other nations.

To trust those who created such a global calamity would be a great mistake.

Trusting them to create culture for us, to create something beautiful, unique, and personally challenging to fill our lives -- to trust them to complete this task is only to make ourselves the slaves to their media.

What concentrated economic powers have done to satisfy their interests has already been demonstrated.

To trust them to make for us the meaning of life would just mean that we're subjecting ourselves to the mental shackles they so desperately wish to put on us.

The message they give to you dominates conversations, thoughts, secret dreams, and painful aspirations. Social control is established in this means by Consumer Culture.

One of the prime indicators of Consumer Culture is television. Mega-corporations fight with each other over the will of the people, by developing newer and more captivating advertisements, by dumbing down plot lines for television shows so they capture more viewers, special interests get their views in and the public just follows along.

That is why television has become the daemon in the nightmares of every Freethinker.

The History Channel, which is hosted by an American corporation, rarely displays the United States government in any negative light.

The show Cops never shows a police officer failing to capture his victim.

The plot lines for most sitcoms revolve around things like money, romance, popularity, and other themes that easily capture attention but always fail to plant something meaningful.

Television programming has gone so far as to place advertisements as a part of the plot.

Here, in the living room of every family, there rests a machine that is constantly feeding ideas to a listening audience.

The plot lines, the themes, the ideals, the suggestions, hidden implications and subliminal advertising, all of it is to create a grasp of the way people think and act.

By their means of massive distribution, the media has molded the opinions of billions of people.

And who is it that holds the keys to this uninterrupted stream of suggestions to the public?

It is anyone who has the money. That is the sole requirement that is necessary to reaching the minds of the public: who possesses the wealth.