The public is subjected to a parade of commodities and fabricated television spectacles designed to keep it preoccupied with the ideals and values of consumerism. Mass media perpetuates the myth as a priority of New Capitalism. As America settles into its nightly routine of television viewing, corporate profiteers are quick to substitute the lure of material luxury and consumer gratification for the fading spirit. Media advertising sells an image -- an empty shell. Corporate America placates the flaccid public with dispiriting pastiche. There is only fraudulent illusion. Instead of Swiss clockworks encased in hand carved hardwood, the consumer is offered a cheap imitation of routed particle board and computer chip technology. Who cares as long as it looks good?
Beneath its smug persona an insecure America strives to fill an image portrayed in the media. Self-awareness and self-worth have been distorted. We are what we wear. In New Capitalism's seduction of the television audience, the individuating personality identifies with advertising fantasies and consumer ideals. Who we are merges with roles and images portrayed in the media. Ever so subtly we are losing our ability to act independently of the justifications of consumerism. This constitutes a qualitative loss to the individuation process. The affront on human values by mass media advertising has left a well actualized consumer but a poorly individuated personality.
The hallowed dollar is a cheap substitute for cultural values lost to greed and ambivalence in postmodern America. Economic worth has displaced traditional cultural values defining self-worth. Self-worth is gauged by buying power. The acts of buying and owning reinforce self-worth within consumer society. You can see it in the haughty and demanding attitude of the consumer as he stands before the cashier.
The egocentricity of Western society made it an easy target for the transition to consumer society. As deceptive advertising and academic nihilism gutted culture of its subjectively realized values, the public was easily swayed onto the path of consumerism. In the midst of a major identity crisis, will America realize the lack of morality and humanitarianism in a world based on media image and the transient satisfaction of ownership? The reduction of cultural values to economic worth has produced a situation in our 'enlightened' society where product availability, as opposed to survival needs, becomes ethical justification for political oppression.
The golden age of modern man has come and gone. The morality of entrepreneurial capitalism (as it courts the consumer) has given way to the interests of corporate capitalism. The corporate ethic is the business ethic. You can feed the public poison if it turns a buck. Within the corporate hierarchy the salaried employee does not have the incentives of the entrepreneurial capitalist. The consumer is no longer courted by the competition of small businesses. Small business has been crowded out by corporate capitalism to ensure less competition and greater profits. In its duplicitous plot to throttle the public, corporate policy assumes only the self-interested exploitation of the market and environmental resources. The priorities are not intrinsically humanitarian or ecologically sensitive.
The economic disparity existing in our country paints a bleak picture of the future. The rich gain more control and the poor have fewer alternatives. Profit margins take precedence over altruistic concerns for human rights. The controlling political hierarchy adheres to policies that violate commonly held ideals of equal justice and peaceful coexistence. Despite constitutional guarantees to the contrary, the public is subjected to political and economic systems bent on exploiting the rights of the many to profit the few. Government policy legislates the political agenda to the advantage of major contributors. It does not represent the masses, nor does it function on behalf of the people beyond a facade of social responsibility.
To the corporate capitalist, the consumer is a target -- he is acted upon. Controlling interests commodify culture and sell it to a public weaned on media advertising. Product selection is reduced, not to what the public wants, but to what it will accept at a greater profit for the stockholder. This includes the availability and variety of commodities as well as their quality. Our choices and freedoms are limited by corporate policy. As we become acclimated to life around the television set, collectively striving for a media-produced image, our choices are made for us. Choice is reduced to brand name. We sacrifice self-knowledge for consumerism. Consumerism, like communism and fascism, is a secular religion restricting freedom of choice.
New Capitalism is the enemy of the people. Behind the butchery of symbolic values by media advertising, the mercantile machine smiles as it folds the green. More than to simply ensure a profit, consumerism is the means by which big business maintains control of its buying public. Society will eventually awaken from its infatuation with consumerism to find itself stripped of tradition, controlled by an oppressive power structure and bound to the credit obligations of a defunct American dream.
Consumers are only beginning to realize the political power they wield as a collective buying force. This potential has been tested on a small scale by union pickets and grassroots economic boycotts. In the future, as the public tires of the shallow gratification and empty promises of consumerism, it will turn to large scale boycotts to control the abusive tactics of corporate policy.
R. Cronk, 2004