Consumtion.
My paper for English 101H class of prof. F.Libman.

Consumption is the main part of today's society. People involved in consuming do not really have time for anything constructive. They are like poor animals in their cages with some cruel advertising agencies punching their bodies with all the ads and consumption stuff, so these people are unable to have in mind anything else but this endless irritating punching. Their mind moves from one object of today's desire to another and they are not willing to think about other things (unless they are paid some money for this thinking).

All advertising companies wildly use the man's desire to find out who we really are and to express our personality. They substitute this rather difficult finding of ourselves with artificially made up trends, uniform in their variety of styles and fashions. Modern trends in clothes, cars, food or furniture are serving the same function of increasing of consumption, persuading people in their necessity, creating the consumption starving for this goods and satisfying this starving. All advertising strategies seem to be aimed on making us forget about reflection and not even try to understand our deeper and unique self in order to make us choose and buy things that we really do not need. They want us to be similar because it is easier to manipulate such people, people with same clothes on them, with same lexicon and same dreams. Everything in modern societies makes us forget ourselves and just buy and buy. All haute couture shows, all auto-salons have only one aim in mind – to make us similar and to make us buy further. So the question about whether we are what we are buying or we are not what we are buying becomes nonsense – we sure are not What we are buying, because in the process of this buying we are manipulated by others and we have already forgot ourselves. We can just say that we are the Buying itself, a faceless buying and nothing else.

Looking around at how people are dressed nowadays for example will show some extreme styles in youth trends, some comfy or business trends in adults mode and comfy, elegant or childish tends for elder people. But look how this seemingly huge variety of styles is basically the same. It looks really depressive and it is strange that totally different people who have so many choices still want to be so similar and to dissolve their own personality in the mass of others. Everybody wants to be original, but we are applying this originality in a way that is advised in advertisements, and we are getting frustrated and alike to each other, and still want to buy more. The thing is that all ads bring extreme emphasize into possessing things. They want us to think that personality can be expressed though possessing. It is not true. Personality always comes from inside out and one can't just put it on like a sweater. But it is much more difficult to dig from inside out, so people with the help of ready-to-serve advertising are more conscious about their styles in everything but not their real self. They are buying and consuming things like drugs in order not to start this endless, difficult, but always honorable search of their true personality.

America is the brightest example of consuming character of today's life. Expression "American Dream" has roots in the very essence of consuming. I feel that the entire nation does not have any other goal but buying stuff. The same is very true for many other societies and cultures (especially now after collapsing of Communism). But here in America people are not only living for consuming, they are really proud of this consuming, they are making pose of it and finally form the proud statement of "American Dream" based totally on possessing and buying. Is this good or bad? Let me be extremist and say that all what is going on in today's world is bad. Consuming to my mind is the leader in the movement toward Bad.

I don't want and will not state that Communism was a good thing that happened to Russia and other countries. It was an artificial and corrupted system of limited freedom and imprisoned spirit. But it had one positive moment though: desire to make some difference not only in a sense of production or consuming but also in a sense of having some honest (despite the fact it was totally absurd) aim in future, the aim that appealed to the souls of people. Probably in all the absurd of this aim lied the Fair Something that made people not only think about consuming things but also think Philosophy, Arts and Universe, and to do something not only because of the money but also because of this stupid and absurd unreal aim. Probably such approach was possible because people were somehow limited: in Communist camp in commodities and in Europe in resources. Probably it was also because in Europe and Russia we did not have such wide web of advertising strategies.

My point of view is that the true aim of every society should be helping every individual to realize his/her inner self and at the same time help every individual to feel divine responsibility about the whole world. The aim of society should not be in pushing people to endless buying. So probably if it can help, governments should try to apply anti-shopping strategies to their countries. It does not really matters if it is simple lack of goods or forbidding of advertising. True governors should try to move their country not in endless circles of buying stuff but toward some really good aim. It does not matter if this aim is unachievable or unreal as soon as it appeals to the very best that everyone has inside the soul. If consumption is limited there would be some place for reflection, for thinking of ourselves not only as lonely individuals that need to have a), b), c), etc. Lack of something (probably it would be better to have lack in everything) is the easiest way of getting rid of this ugly and primitive consumption instinct. If people have nothing to buy anymore they would find other values and I am sure that those values will be much higher and noble than consumption. At first such state of things will certainly make average people fury, because consumption is a very easy instinct of a person and it is really cool to consume and not to do anything else but this. To spend the whole life working for this consuming (and before studying for the same ability to consume more in future). So people will get angry but when realizing that there is really nothing to consume anymore, that their choices are limited, that they don't have all this luxurious variety of goods anymore, they will probably start to think about something else. They will stop taking their kids to the Mall every weekend (there will be nothing at the mall but simple blue jeans and sweatshirts in every window). They will go to Museums and Libraries. They will teach their kids that there is a lot of eternal beauty about nature and sky, classic music and fairy-tales.

All this is a funny utopia, yes, but I really believe that consuming society is an evil society. It can transform even the best people into lazy animals who work in order to buy stuff and then die without ever thinking about something real or looking up in the sky. Here in America people surely do go to the museums, etc., but I just wanted to stress, that it is a state of things in the modern world now that it is more important to have money and buy things, than to stare at Van Gogh's drawings. But wouldn't it be wonderful if it is not like this?! For me this life in the ideal society would be like in a notorious old story where three construction workers are doing the same job. The first one is thinking that he puts one brick to another. The second is sure he is building a sort of a wall. And the third one knows he is making his job in order to built a beautiful temple that will surprise people with its endless charm and eternal spirit. I would like to see such a society, where everybody knows that he is building this Temple and even in the process of hardest work can feel how beautiful this Temple will be.



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