In summary, the video is about how the US uses the media to maintain a consumerist culture and keep its citizens ignorant and "enslaved", so that they don't spend time thinking about things that really matter. It discusses how advertisements, celebrities, the War on Terror, and empty catchphrases are used to achieve this, how the US consumerist culture is unsustainable, and why people in the US are not truly free.
I was intrigued by this video, so I asked people about their thoughts on it over brunch.
"Oh, propaganda about propaganda? Propagand-ception!"
"It's from North Korea? They're not doing so well themselves either."
"What's wrong with a consumerist culture? Is there something that matters more than economics? Anyway you should watch this movie about North Korea invading the US, it's like top ten in the box office."
And they continued talking about their favorite food, sports teams, and the flowers in the middle of the table. Sigh. I guess these things matter a lot to them.
-------------------------
So here are my thoughts.
A preface to talking about "consumption"
One easy trap to fall into when talking about consumerism is using the word consumption to describe anything we do in order to make it sound like it is a bad thing to do, then using a different set of vocabulary to talk about an alternative in order to make the alternative sound like a "solution" to the "problem". The video commits this mistake a lot. Whenever the video talks about consumption, it shows footages of morbidly obese people eating junk food to viscerally cement the point that consumption = bad. But a farmer eating rice with beanstalks after a hard day of work is also consumption. So is taking the train. Many things we do are acts of consumption, and you have to do some of it to remain as a productive member of society. You have to eat something. You have to dress appropriately for your job interview. You have to go school because it helps you make better decisions, and the decisions you make affect others. All these are acts of consumption in some form, but few will argue that they are bad things to do. So consumption ≠ bad. But consumption is a word loaded with bad connotations, so I'll avoid using this word.
Balancing out the video's tone
The video claims that a consumerist culture is the result of a positive feedback loop in a capitalist economy:
1) People want to buy things. People who make and sell goods want to buy things too, so they want to make more money.
2) To make more money, corporations need to sell more goods, so they advertise aggressively. The most effective advertisements have an effect of making people want to buy their things. Go back to 1).
But the implicit message is that in such a culture, when people buy and use/eat things,
1) They are only doing it to make themselves feel better. It implies a hollow and ultimately unfulfilling existence. This is essentially the problem of how one can possibly find meaning in life if one subscribes to utilitarianism. It's a philosophical problem and capitalism did not cause it.
2) They don't do anything else. Since corporations strongly affect what people want to buy, by controlling what people buy they effectively control how people live, and thus the people are "enslaved". Well, this is not true. When someone buys a camera, it's generally for taking photos and not "look I have a camera I am cool". The things you own facilitate what you already want to do. It would take a fantastic leap of reason to argue that an artist who buys a canvas is a slave to consumerism just because he/she bought something from a corporation. Using something that you have bought is also not just a passive act that merely fulfills a hollow desire. You can use a cell phone's text messaging function to meet up with friends. A husband can also use his car to drive his pregnant wife home(shout out!). People want to be nice to each other and will do it in any way they want. There is still a great deal of freedom in a world where almost everything you use has to be bought with money.
3) They mostly buy things they don't need. Technically you don't need a camera to survive. Technically you don't need books either. Or vaccines. But now that technology has granted us such powers, why not use it? Good reasons: You could have spent that money on better things. It's bad for the environment. Bad reason: You don't need it to survive.
So the big problem that the video makes that it assumes that life in a consumerist culture is inherently unfulfilling. It need not be. But one thing they did bring up is: people could, theoretically, live happier and healthier lives with less impact on the environment, so why aren't we doing it? I think this is a good point. But there is the problem of how such a life is going to look like. The next problem is how we get there and stay there. It's hard though, because many people are already used to a certain lifestyle and it would be a very disruptive change. (People have tried disruptive changes before, but it didn't work.)
Is there a point to it though? Even if we are not making cultural progress, there is definitely progress in infrastructure and science. If the Earth is all we have to care about, then if we can find the "meaning to life", not having scientific and technological progress that doesn't really matter either. But we'll all be fucked if an asteroid comes along.
The problem of sustainability is a big problem for capitalism though. Perhaps capitalism causes such a strain on the planet that it doesn't even make sense to worry about asteroids. I don't know. But the technology actually exists to solve our problems, it's just that incentives are currently not aligned correctly for everyone to act in the optimal way. When solar/fusion power becomes available on a large scale, we're going to be okay.
Logging you in...