Consumer society wants to turn the world into a museum. (Warhol)
Perhaps the World Cup next year will succeed in suppressing the deep horrors of the war in Ukraine, what we have all seen in the footage of the genocide in Gaza, and the photo documentation of the massacre in Sudan, because the spectacular events that immerse the global village aim to: to offer a game product in which millions will participate, since the consumer wants to be and experience part of the market competition!
A cynic might say that the German sociologist Rainer Paris in an essay entitled 'Destruction of everyday life' (The destruction of everyday life, The world) failed, given that during the planetary paralysis, total standstill, police lockdown as a medical preventive measure due to the covid-19 virus pandemic, we had peace at the same time, nature breathed, after so many years (which we wrote about), ducks appeared in the canals of Venice, now, instead of, therefore, the destruction of everyday life, we have a global catastrophe: in the north of Moscow yesterday (December 8th) a temperature of 2 degrees was recorded, due to which the first mushrooms appeared; on the political front, there is increasing speculation about a possible war between Europe and Russia, especially since (let's pay attention to this) the voice of reason that appears to warn Europe is, at the moment, the voice of none other than Donald Trump, which is a scenario that no one could have predicted, however, such is the current everyday life in which we cannot, and still cannot, escape the growing uncertainty that produces a sense of fear and despair, confusion and disorientation.
Europe is acting like a joke. Sejm Goldwyn, who, after the screenwriters told him how they were constantly being warned to refrain from using clichés, retorted: Yes, we need a lot more clichés! Yes: the war needs to be prolonged, the German Chancellor is particularly emphatic about this. Friedrich Mertz who, during a rally in London, expressed doubts about Russia and what it will settle for. Yes: if Europe also goes to war, then it will mean that we need more wars to stop it.
In fact, when we look at it from a purely human perspective, while accepting that we live in an era of consumerism and commodification, even the apocalypse, that the famous 'Black Friday' is celebrated throughout the West because then the prices of 'magical goods' are halved, why shouldn't the World Cup in football, that game that is the perception of heaven for the average man, make us forget what kind of world we live in? After all: the culture of memory only further burdens the political slogan that we should turn to the future. It is enough, therefore, to just hear that and it immediately becomes clear in whose hands we have handed our fate, to phenomena like Goldwyn who are tasked with producing a bunch of clichés on a daily basis, and to make matters worse, that recipe turns out to be the best for mobilizing the masses to entertain themselves with comments by expressing their views on literally all events.
Trump first won over voters by saying what is kept secret, which showed that he does not wear a mask or shy away from being a villain, however, it turns out that this approach has exposed the world's political establishment, fully demonstrating that liberal democrats are recognized as those who act completely opposite to what they say, so, every time they embarked on a military intervention to expand democracy and strengthen human rights, behind that ideological screen the truth was the opposite: it was a campaign aimed at exploiting underdeveloped countries, with the need to carry out a new colonization that would also demonstrate military superiority to the rest of the world. Now, however, America is withdrawing into itself, carrying out, behind closed doors, a great 'list and calculation', with the obvious intention of dealing with all migrants and immigrants, as well as with "surplus" employees, and to deny funding to countless organizations with a program of spreading all sorts of values that are primarily monetized, to be clear.
Excess consumption as a substance of spectacularity
Famous Black Friday, when a big sale comes on the scene, he raised the question of how this affects the ecology, following the logic that the abundance of goods that must be sold must also end up somewhere (in our country, these are usually illegal landfills where waste is disposed of without any consideration of how it affects the environment, which almost turns into an endless wasteland, if we also take into account illegal construction and the additional devastation of space that is being capitalized on in every possible way, made profitable and economically viable), and how we do not belong to a rich world that is governed by calculation - I am not so rich that I trade unnecessary things - we, therefore, show our status by signaling through goods, objects, things, everything that is the mechanism by which the great Other exercises its control, because, as has already been explained, desire is always the desire of the Other.
How we belong to the era global feasts, consumption supported by the effect of euphoria, can it be said that this direction is also applied when it comes to wars: filmed, televised, shared and shared via links, they are transformed into consumption, into content that divides us even more deeply, if we bear in mind the fact that we are extremely competitive when it comes to taking sides, sharing lessons about the correctness of Russians, i.e., Israelis, anti-immigration policies that, in fact, although we do not realize it, primarily preserve our identity, traditional code, national nucleus, community as a healthy organism, etc. Then, ultra-patriarchal phenomena should always be admonished with words Saint Paul"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (John 19:16/1 Cor. 7:21.)
Excessive consumption, which is an end in itself, causes in the collective feeling that one is no longer able to make a distinction between the object of worship and the Neighbor, which is the source and trigger for neurosis, frustration, 'fetid' feelings (we are familiar with scenes in films when suddenly a family finds itself in tragic situations and then a fight breaks out between the husband, wife and children, then every word spoken reveals what has been, in fact, keeping the family together all along or then destroying it) the eternal deprivation that we suffer, registered on our part, and, indeed, today it is necessary for the police and psychiatry to deal with every relationship simultaneously, especially since human relationships have been replaced by relationships between things. Let us ask, therefore: How do we communicate with each other?
“The concepts of “surroundings”, “ambience”, undoubtedly could not possess this actuality until we ourselves began to live essentially less in the vicinity of other people, in their presence and linguistic space, and more under the silent gaze of obedient, hallucinatory objects that always repeat to us the same discourse - the discourse of our petrified power, our virtual wealth, our absence from each other” (Baudrillard, Consumer society).
Nothing separates us, does not alienate us from each other as much as global events, spectacles and the effective mass media attraction to screens where, indeed, everything takes place, while in reality it becomes a pale and unattractive, even unwatchable ceremony. Thus we are transformed into that which is subject to consumption, we do not consume as much as we are already largely in the circulation of universal consumption, hence always autocannibals, those who persist from what they digest and in another state vomit outside, into a world reduced to static, a gigantic cemetery waiting to be recycled.
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