«Man has become homo consumens. He is greedy, passive and tries to balance his inner emptiness with a constant and increasing consumption.» – (Erich Fromm)
Greece and the whole world live to the rhythm of Black Friday. Advertising peacocks remind us that happiness and social recognition are a function of our ability to consume.
Thus consumption has become the new deity of our time as an inevitable consequence of the economic system that exhorts «thrift» as evil and glorifies «waste».
The traditional savings day (31 October) was quickly forgotten because the «piggy bank» and individual treasure are against the laws of the market and capitalism.
When Cartesian proclaimed «Cogito, ergo Sum» (I think, therefore I exist) he could not have imagined that this position would mutate into «Consumo, ergo Sum» (I consume, therefore I exist). Spirituality ceased to be regarded as an element of affirmation of human existence and was replaced by its consumer performance. The modern individual has thus been completely subjugated to the logic and mechanisms of a «hedonistic culture» that pushes its victims into a constant search for more ways of instant gratification.
Erchie Fromm argued that «freedom today means the possibility of unlimited consumption». This position has thus been elevated to the highest social value and at the same time to an evaluative criterion for all individual and social behaviour. Ο homo consumens dominates as a representative type of our society and interweaves both individual desires and social standards and demands. An outgrowth of this social model is the consumerism that has gone from a normal human function to a dangerous one bulimia that puts the inner freedom of the individual to the test.
Consumerism vs Freedom
Ο consumerism, therefore, to some extent constitutes a form of psychological unfreedom. This is because uncritical consumption manages, with the help of hidden mechanisms, to transform in people's consciousness secondary needs into primary ones. The individual becomes a prisoner and a prisoner of the fictitious needs that press for immediate satisfaction. Thus the subject of consumerism is overcome by a sense of unsatisfactoriness and is tyrannically driven by exogenous forces.
The consequence of this situation is the subordination of reason to the horses' passions that disable any possibility not only of self-knowledge but also of knowledge of the underground currents of society. The result of this is the erosion of the autonomy of the individual's choices and the construction of a super-submissive being.
A basic parameter of the relationship between consumerism and freedom is also the element of man's ability to buy and consume what the sirens of advertising impose on him as real needs. To the extent, however, that the individual is unable to satisfy the constant and increasing needs, then he feels an indeterminate inferiority complex. The result of this experience is nervous tension, envy, anxiety and a sense of failure.
The above negative emotions interweave the tissue of the low self-esteem which is usually accompanied by reduced self-confidence which in turn creates a context of inner emptiness and imbalance. Thus the individual is trapped in the barbed wire and deadlocks of a psychological disorder - entropy that deconstructs the foundations of his inner freedom.
Consumerism and Alienation
«With a multitude of commodities is created the kingdom of foreign things that enslave man’ – (C. Marx)
Black Friday and its offspring, hyper-consumerism, remind us in a dramatic way of the erosion of the relationship between «man - creator» and his «objects - creations».
Man, that is, dazzled and trapped in material prosperity, is unable to control all those primitive desires that keep him in bondage to his biological existence. Comfort and luxury have created a materialistic culture and a materialistic man who deifies objects and matter. The creator man does not experience himself as an active agent of his personal powers but as a poor «object» dependent on forces outside himself.
This type of man, heterodox and super-intelligent, is alienated from himself and worships the creations - products of his hands. The creatures have been reduced to an objective power over us, escaping our control and ruling us.
Our creations have become our news Images and impose their own terms of thought and behaviour on us. Thus the human consumer is confirmed daily through the blind devotion to his creations, which are stripped of any element of spirituality, morality and mental-emotional completeness. We are heading, therefore, towards a «new slavery» which imposes a blindness on the slave-creator under the blinding light of the master-creation.
Our defense...
«Affluence is something unfathomable, an addictive hallucinogen, and that's why it causes more and more doses» – (Α. Terzakis)
In the face of the onslaught of Black Friday and the resulting consumerism, we cannot and should not raise a «white flag» or throw in the «white towel». We need awakening, mental alertness and resistance.
Rodin's sculpture «The Thinker» will view with melancholy and much skepticism the «fall» of modern man into the tentacles of consumerism. A spiritual and moral uplift is therefore required if we, as attractive beings, are to be able to free ourselves from the shackles of consumerism and master our needs. Otherwise we risk nullifying the basic principle of «not being possessed by what we possess».
Our aim is to produce «useful things and people» and not «maximum consumption».
Our aim must be to expose and cancel the new forms of social control that Marcuse denounced in «One-Dimensional Man».
«People recognize themselves in their commodities, find their soul in their cars... The mechanism that connects the individual to his society has changed and social control is found in the new needs it has given birth to.».
By Ilias Giannakopoulos, Philologist, graduate of the Athens School of Philosophy
