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| The Ugly Face Behind the Mask of Consumerism by Mathew Webb |
| Heal your Heart - Love your Body - Live your Joy! Simply Stunning! A beautiful and profound experience 3 guided meditations on one CD. Access higher wisdom, intuition and insights. Change habits, release fears and activate healing energies. Buy Now Full description. Read what others say Sound samples and instant downloads |
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| Heal your Heart, Love your Body and Claim your Joy! Reinventing Myself by Sonya Green is now available in paperback. Click the book cover to find out more. |
| EBook also available. Instant download for only $8 |
If you feel this website has inspired you or resonated with you or if you found yourself thinking about someone who would benefit
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If you would like to support this site you might consider emailing in suggestions or comments, a small donation, purchasing a product
or visiting the links to our sponsors.
from visiting these pages - Trust Your Intuition and send them the link.
If you would like to copy an article to your site or blog, you are welcome to do so, but must note copyright Sonya Green and refer to
www.reinventingmyself.com
If you would like to support this site you might consider emailing in suggestions or comments, a small donation, purchasing a product
or visiting the links to our sponsors.
Few can deny that the world as we know it is about to end with a crash.
Yet it is shocking to realize that the public today appears oblivious to the grave
circumstances which face our planet. Or do people just pretend to be
oblivious? It is becoming increasingly difficult, after all, to pretend that there is
nothing wrong with the world as we know it. Yet public casualness about our
own looming extinction is surely an intentionally cultivated facade.
Our uncaring attitude is clearly a self induced denial of the blatant facts,which
confront every human being in one way or another, each and every day.
Among the most potent of these facts is that the human world is poised to take
a tremendous fall…a literal crashing down of all the institutions of our day, of
governments collapsing, economies falling apart, the failure of agriculture and
the ecosystems upon which it depends, mass mental disorder and epidemic
levels of cancer, wars for profit without end or sane reason, and a whole list of
other related symptoms, OF A CENTRAL AND LARGELY UNNAMED
CAUSE.
That cause is the holding of WRONG VALUES…those which destroy and
degrade life, rather than affirm and enhance it.
If ever there were a central source for all the worlds’ ills, and for the imminent
demise of human beings everywhere, it can be summed up by two simple
values…GREED and EGOTISM. These two words can
further be summed up by one single world view, one single word that is the
source of all our problems as a species, and that word, that paradigm, is
CONSUMERISM.
Perhaps the reader imagines that such a statement is preposterous. How could
consumerism, the very well spring from which flows all that is good in life (or
so we have all been told by corporate
media since the day we were born) possibly be the source of all our ills, you
may ask? Isn’t consumerism the very means by which all that we need in life
is produced, transported, manufactured and delivered? No it is not.
Consumerism is in fact a fanatical belief system based upon suicidal
irrationality. It has next to nothing to do with practicality, efficiency, logic,
truth or the sane accommodation of reality. It has everything to do with the
stimulation of desire for unneeded goods and destructive industries,
to BUY without logic, to CONSUME without care, to live without purpose, to
speak without meaning and to follow without question. It is a set of values
which promotes the imagined ego-boosting properties of products, without real
concern for their practical value or the consequences of their manufacture.
Consumerism is a death-cult of childish fixations upon material things, as a
false replacement for love, clarity, sanity, spirituality and truth. It therefore
caters to the basest, most destructive and ignoble of human traits, amplifying
these above all other considerations in life and at the cost of all that is living.
If you doubt this, then take a look at the following list of world ills and
consider…
1) Widespread corruption in government and boardrooms alike is considered,
“business as usual”.
2) The degradation of medicine from the promotion of health, to preying upon
the sick and the intentional cultivation of disease, for the sake of making money.
3) Wholesale destruction of the worlds’ ecosystems, global warming and the
mass extinction of species unlike anything ever known in the natural history of
this planet, all for the purpose of corporate earnings.
4) The promotion of war for profit in the name of democracy and liberation.
5) Extreme hypocrisy in religion in the speaking of righteousness, and in the
doing of the exact opposite in daily life.
6) The treating of humans, plants and animals alike as nothing more than,
“resources” which exist solely to be exploited, for the sake of immediate
personal gratification and endless egotism.
7) Intentional shallowness and outright lies told daily by all mass media.
8) The mental decay of the public in imbecilic fascination with trivia and
pointless drama, as reflected by the vast majority of television, “programming”.
9) The continuing degradation of agriculture and extreme cruelty in animal
husbandry, pollution of bodies through toxic, unnatural practices, genetic
engineering, cancer-causing pesticides and herbicides, soil depletion, erosion,
desertification and lack of water, all in the production of inferior produce for
the sake of corporate convenience.
10) Abuses of the public trust, pay-offs and scandals of every possible
description on a daily basis, as the norm for politics and government leadership.
11) Pettiness between the leaders of nations, and the wholesale deterioration of
international relations in endless wars, civil strife, phony posturing and
pointless arrogance.
12) Education as a farce of conditioning and blind adherence to dogma and
authority, not the freeing of the mind or the encouragement of questioning.
13) National, state, corporate and personal debt to the scale of tens of trillions
of dollars, as a reflection of SPENDING carelessly and foolishly.
14) The widespread use of “mood stabilizers” among adults and even school
children as young as even, implying mass mental illness and the wrongness of
this way of life.
Etc, etc…on and on and on….
The list of world ills is endless, and it is part and parcel of the consumer
paradigm to pretend that, “all is well” irregardless. It is literally considered,
“impolite” to speak of such matters in daily conversation.
How is consumerism directly and largely responsible for all of these problems?
It is responsible for them because the attitudes and values that sustain the
consumer world, i.e., endless greed and shallow egotism, make all of the above
a daily reality. Read once again the list above and ask
yourself, “Which one of these ills of the modern world is not directly traceable,
and absolutely founded upon, the source causes of greed and egotism?” You
will be forced to answer with any honesty, “All of them”. Then ask yourself,
“What single world view, what single word of all the
words that exist, could better summarize the twin values of greed and
egotism?” You will be forced to answer with any honesty, “consumerism”.
Consumerism is about sacrificing your sanity, your health, good family
relations, your children, your love, clarity, intelligence, naturalness and
wisdom, for the sake of earning “the sacred cash” and accumulating a lot of
supposedly impressive, expensive objects.
Society calls this, “being a success”.
Consumerism is about looking down on the natural as inferior, as something to
exploit and which has no meaning or value other than what personal objects of
self indulgence it can provide. It is a
value system of abusing nature and the breaking of natural laws for the sake of
profits regardless of the obvious consequences, in strip mining, clear cutting,
genetic engineering, asphalting and toxicity, criminality in pollution and mass
extinction, all in the name of Wall Street economy,
(greed).
Society calls this, “progress”.
Consumerism is about being an addict who has so little MIND left, that their
every act is one of whim, impulse and irrational waste. We are taught that the
purpose of life is the acquisition of brand names that supposedly enhance our,
“prestige” in the eyes of an admiring public. But the
actual fact is, that the consumer is a silly dupe whose sanity hangs on a thread,
and whose life is the misery of an endless drudge-work, wage slave. Thus the
drudge is ever in debt in order to pay for their long list of addictions to “things”
which the consumer world has them believing
they “must have” to be, “happy” and “successful”. In order to pay this debt
they work away their entire adult lives in servitude to plastic, chrome-plated
trinkets.
Society refers to this lifelong struggle as a “career”, a process also known as, ”
planning for your financial future” and, “establishing your good credit”.
At the end of that exercise in self destruction where health is replaced by
disease, cancer and mental psychosis, the “worthy member of society” is
allowed to “rest” and “play” while taking half a dozen medications daily just to
stay alive, only to end up babbling in senility and wearing an adult diaper.
Society calls this social phenomena, “retirement”.
Although it is popular to treat all of the above as “different” problems that
demand separate measures, they are by no means separate. They ALL, each
and every one of them, spring from the very same source, and are founded
upon the very same set of wrong values. The values of greed and
egotism which literally make consumerism what it is today, represent a phony-
baloney paradigm of waste, corruption and fraudulence, that can only end in
one result…the destruction of life and all that is good, as well as the extinction
of the human race. “Consumerism” is the polite, politically
correct name for the contamination of the human spirit by the filth of suicidal,
infantile self indulgence. It is a “faith” in the absurd proposition that
things=fulfillment which neither satisfies, nor produces anything of real value
to the world. Instead, it is quickly parasitizing the globe and everything upon it,
just as a cancer eats away at its’ host body, demanding all and
giving nothing but landfills, deserts, war zones, failed banks and broken lives.
It is a world view which teaches that there is literally NOTHING as important
in life as money and what it can buy for the sake of, “looking good” to a
numbed, dumbed-down public of wage slave automatons. Consumerism is
hollow…it is a fancy-looking box with elaborate wrappings, containing nothing
inside but distractions from all the self-induced pain and fear of the world. It is
nothing but silly, juvenile imagery, a con game dressed up to look like
something admirable, like a suit and tie hung on the manicured ass of a donkey.
Consumerism says, “Buy this fancy-looking overpriced car or house, and
spend the next 20-30 years of your life paying them off, so that you can look
like a, “success” to your neighbors. Your neighbors are in turn playing the
same absurd game, as dictated by what they see every day on, “the
tube”. Thus civility dies, rational conversation turns to petty posturing,
community becomes a police state of locked gates, no trespassing signs,
manicured lawns, legal battles and fences
to “protect” each little would-be emperor and their host of “things”, from
competing emperors and “have-nothing trash”. By the same token, and through
the same empty, soulless state of greed and entropic egotism, goodwill among
nations becomes the meaningless posturing of world leaders through the
gibberish of political slogans, and the policy of “furthering their national
interests” at the cost of millions of lives, pointless suffering and entire regions
of the earth being stripped bare. Nothing in the consumer world is sacred
except image, (egotism) and the way
to, “sell your image” to others, is supposedly through, “things” which are
themselves, “images”… ones that supposedly confer, “worth” in the eyes of
the deaf, dumb and blind.
The consumer world, in short, is a social landscape painted by corporate con
artists, and made reality by the willing. Statistical knowledge of human
reactions has revealed more about what NOT
TO SAY about a product or service, than what its’ actual practical value may
be. To pull off their “sale” of largely bogus and unneeded goods, (read SCAM)
it is in the best interest of the corporate world and the mass media which
caters to it, to keep the public in a perpetual state of
ignorance and sheer stupidity. The “logic” of this practice is simple…if you’re
a con artist offering something whose real and practical worth is nowhere near
the price you’re asking, then you must “cultivate” your market of potential
buyers (dupes) by making sure they are exposed to the
full range of mind-destroying practices of education, advertising and social
conditioning known to the modern science of propaganda. In so doing the level
of manifest intelligence of the public has become so degraded, that not only
will the average person fall for literally ANYTHING that is presented with the
appropriate song and dance, they have been conditioned to actually be hostile to
questioning of any kind. “Why ask why” a recent beer ad asked, “because you
work hard and you’re worth it”. “Why ask why” is indeed the very epitome of
the modern age, because it is the one question the modern world cannot afford
to ask, and still keep things the way they currently are.
But things simply CANNOT remain as they are, regardless of all the pathetic
assurances to the contrary in popular media. This is a mathematically
irrefutable FACT. Consumerism is by nature ALL
DESTRUCTIVE. It is a parasitical process of hysterical beliefs which
essentially values NOTHING but shallow ideas of self indulgence at the cost of
ALL ELSE. It assumes, arrogantly, that man is at the center of the universe. It
promotes the idea that humans are the personal darlings of God Almighty, and
that our personal indulgences outweigh the value of all the plants, animals,
facts and natural laws of the universe. “…Because you’re worth it” is the
catch-phrase of that world, and through this thinking, supposedly any dark
deed is deemed acceptable, any destructive occupation for the sake of a
paycheck justified, and any war made glorious for the sake of, “national
interests”. In the end, which by the way is not very distant from now, the
consumer mindset will be forced to cannibalize itself, wherein the consumers
will be consumed and nations fall into ruin. To say that the consumer world is,
“unsustainable” is an extreme understatement.
It would be more accurate to say that consumerism is a soulless state of
desperation, whose degree of inner lack is directly proportional to the
unquenchable desire to try to fill that lack with meaningless material things. It
is a very foolish belief system which can only subsist through denial and
manifest stupidity. This system is, as we speak, pressuring nature and nations
alike, with households and persons reeling in confusion, to produce ever more,
earn more profits, secure more resources, even while those very practices are
destroying nations, households and persons, and even while those very
resources are rapidly running out. It is madness, pure and simple.
Because consumerism is at the very heart of the suicidal modern condition, and
because it is composed of greed and egotism by which society simply
CANNOT run effectively, (for obvious reasons) it is necessary to reject that
belief system in all its forms. It is necessary to reject the demeaning idea that a
persons’ social identity is that of a “consumer”, a word which literally means,
“one who consumes” and which does not qualify them to be anything more
than a worm. A worm “consumes”…a bacteria “consumes”, but human
destiny is about intelligent use of the mind and the exaltation of the soul in
wisdom. It is necessary to reject the paltry notion that life is defined as the
accumulation of objects, that money equals love, that clarity is irrelevant, and
that the universe holds no more meaning than can be assigned to it by any 30
second TV commercial.
It is necessary to reject the idea that all of existence is an exercise is
exploitation, that social relations are nothing but the posturing of images, (as
seen on TV) and that the acts of mass suicide in corporate industry, constantly
visited upon the good earth, are to be known as, “progress”. So long as such
values and beliefs prevail in society we are literally DOOMED as a race. All
other efforts beyond the rejection of these lies and petty falsehoods to secure a
better world MUST ultimately fail, so long as the consumer paradigm remains
in place.
To accomplish this rejection, this fundamental change of values and lifestyle, it
is our deepest need to be HONEST and to cultivate minds that respect a
factual, truthful examination of life, regardless of how we may feel about the
matter. There is literally NOTHING honest in the world of
consumerism…everything is either a lie or based upon lies. We must reject the
notion that we are the center of the universe, (another lie) which can do no
ultimate wrong, and that our personal, self-indulged feelings as, “consumers”
are far more important than the facts and reality which now
confront this world. Then and only then can we manifest a sane lifestyle, one
that is measured not by sales slogans or brand names, but by practicality,
efficiency, logic, truth, wisdom and real fulfillment in spiritual advancement.
Collectively, this is the true definition of “progress”, and
individually, the true definition of “success”.
Doing so is nothing less than the measure of our fitness to survive this century,
and further evolve as a truly intelligent race…
Matthew Webb visionquest@eoni.com
The World Mind Society
Yet it is shocking to realize that the public today appears oblivious to the grave
circumstances which face our planet. Or do people just pretend to be
oblivious? It is becoming increasingly difficult, after all, to pretend that there is
nothing wrong with the world as we know it. Yet public casualness about our
own looming extinction is surely an intentionally cultivated facade.
Our uncaring attitude is clearly a self induced denial of the blatant facts,which
confront every human being in one way or another, each and every day.
Among the most potent of these facts is that the human world is poised to take
a tremendous fall…a literal crashing down of all the institutions of our day, of
governments collapsing, economies falling apart, the failure of agriculture and
the ecosystems upon which it depends, mass mental disorder and epidemic
levels of cancer, wars for profit without end or sane reason, and a whole list of
other related symptoms, OF A CENTRAL AND LARGELY UNNAMED
CAUSE.
That cause is the holding of WRONG VALUES…those which destroy and
degrade life, rather than affirm and enhance it.
If ever there were a central source for all the worlds’ ills, and for the imminent
demise of human beings everywhere, it can be summed up by two simple
values…GREED and EGOTISM. These two words can
further be summed up by one single world view, one single word that is the
source of all our problems as a species, and that word, that paradigm, is
CONSUMERISM.
Perhaps the reader imagines that such a statement is preposterous. How could
consumerism, the very well spring from which flows all that is good in life (or
so we have all been told by corporate
media since the day we were born) possibly be the source of all our ills, you
may ask? Isn’t consumerism the very means by which all that we need in life
is produced, transported, manufactured and delivered? No it is not.
Consumerism is in fact a fanatical belief system based upon suicidal
irrationality. It has next to nothing to do with practicality, efficiency, logic,
truth or the sane accommodation of reality. It has everything to do with the
stimulation of desire for unneeded goods and destructive industries,
to BUY without logic, to CONSUME without care, to live without purpose, to
speak without meaning and to follow without question. It is a set of values
which promotes the imagined ego-boosting properties of products, without real
concern for their practical value or the consequences of their manufacture.
Consumerism is a death-cult of childish fixations upon material things, as a
false replacement for love, clarity, sanity, spirituality and truth. It therefore
caters to the basest, most destructive and ignoble of human traits, amplifying
these above all other considerations in life and at the cost of all that is living.
If you doubt this, then take a look at the following list of world ills and
consider…
1) Widespread corruption in government and boardrooms alike is considered,
“business as usual”.
2) The degradation of medicine from the promotion of health, to preying upon
the sick and the intentional cultivation of disease, for the sake of making money.
3) Wholesale destruction of the worlds’ ecosystems, global warming and the
mass extinction of species unlike anything ever known in the natural history of
this planet, all for the purpose of corporate earnings.
4) The promotion of war for profit in the name of democracy and liberation.
5) Extreme hypocrisy in religion in the speaking of righteousness, and in the
doing of the exact opposite in daily life.
6) The treating of humans, plants and animals alike as nothing more than,
“resources” which exist solely to be exploited, for the sake of immediate
personal gratification and endless egotism.
7) Intentional shallowness and outright lies told daily by all mass media.
8) The mental decay of the public in imbecilic fascination with trivia and
pointless drama, as reflected by the vast majority of television, “programming”.
9) The continuing degradation of agriculture and extreme cruelty in animal
husbandry, pollution of bodies through toxic, unnatural practices, genetic
engineering, cancer-causing pesticides and herbicides, soil depletion, erosion,
desertification and lack of water, all in the production of inferior produce for
the sake of corporate convenience.
10) Abuses of the public trust, pay-offs and scandals of every possible
description on a daily basis, as the norm for politics and government leadership.
11) Pettiness between the leaders of nations, and the wholesale deterioration of
international relations in endless wars, civil strife, phony posturing and
pointless arrogance.
12) Education as a farce of conditioning and blind adherence to dogma and
authority, not the freeing of the mind or the encouragement of questioning.
13) National, state, corporate and personal debt to the scale of tens of trillions
of dollars, as a reflection of SPENDING carelessly and foolishly.
14) The widespread use of “mood stabilizers” among adults and even school
children as young as even, implying mass mental illness and the wrongness of
this way of life.
Etc, etc…on and on and on….
The list of world ills is endless, and it is part and parcel of the consumer
paradigm to pretend that, “all is well” irregardless. It is literally considered,
“impolite” to speak of such matters in daily conversation.
How is consumerism directly and largely responsible for all of these problems?
It is responsible for them because the attitudes and values that sustain the
consumer world, i.e., endless greed and shallow egotism, make all of the above
a daily reality. Read once again the list above and ask
yourself, “Which one of these ills of the modern world is not directly traceable,
and absolutely founded upon, the source causes of greed and egotism?” You
will be forced to answer with any honesty, “All of them”. Then ask yourself,
“What single world view, what single word of all the
words that exist, could better summarize the twin values of greed and
egotism?” You will be forced to answer with any honesty, “consumerism”.
Consumerism is about sacrificing your sanity, your health, good family
relations, your children, your love, clarity, intelligence, naturalness and
wisdom, for the sake of earning “the sacred cash” and accumulating a lot of
supposedly impressive, expensive objects.
Society calls this, “being a success”.
Consumerism is about looking down on the natural as inferior, as something to
exploit and which has no meaning or value other than what personal objects of
self indulgence it can provide. It is a
value system of abusing nature and the breaking of natural laws for the sake of
profits regardless of the obvious consequences, in strip mining, clear cutting,
genetic engineering, asphalting and toxicity, criminality in pollution and mass
extinction, all in the name of Wall Street economy,
(greed).
Society calls this, “progress”.
Consumerism is about being an addict who has so little MIND left, that their
every act is one of whim, impulse and irrational waste. We are taught that the
purpose of life is the acquisition of brand names that supposedly enhance our,
“prestige” in the eyes of an admiring public. But the
actual fact is, that the consumer is a silly dupe whose sanity hangs on a thread,
and whose life is the misery of an endless drudge-work, wage slave. Thus the
drudge is ever in debt in order to pay for their long list of addictions to “things”
which the consumer world has them believing
they “must have” to be, “happy” and “successful”. In order to pay this debt
they work away their entire adult lives in servitude to plastic, chrome-plated
trinkets.
Society refers to this lifelong struggle as a “career”, a process also known as, ”
planning for your financial future” and, “establishing your good credit”.
At the end of that exercise in self destruction where health is replaced by
disease, cancer and mental psychosis, the “worthy member of society” is
allowed to “rest” and “play” while taking half a dozen medications daily just to
stay alive, only to end up babbling in senility and wearing an adult diaper.
Society calls this social phenomena, “retirement”.
Although it is popular to treat all of the above as “different” problems that
demand separate measures, they are by no means separate. They ALL, each
and every one of them, spring from the very same source, and are founded
upon the very same set of wrong values. The values of greed and
egotism which literally make consumerism what it is today, represent a phony-
baloney paradigm of waste, corruption and fraudulence, that can only end in
one result…the destruction of life and all that is good, as well as the extinction
of the human race. “Consumerism” is the polite, politically
correct name for the contamination of the human spirit by the filth of suicidal,
infantile self indulgence. It is a “faith” in the absurd proposition that
things=fulfillment which neither satisfies, nor produces anything of real value
to the world. Instead, it is quickly parasitizing the globe and everything upon it,
just as a cancer eats away at its’ host body, demanding all and
giving nothing but landfills, deserts, war zones, failed banks and broken lives.
It is a world view which teaches that there is literally NOTHING as important
in life as money and what it can buy for the sake of, “looking good” to a
numbed, dumbed-down public of wage slave automatons. Consumerism is
hollow…it is a fancy-looking box with elaborate wrappings, containing nothing
inside but distractions from all the self-induced pain and fear of the world. It is
nothing but silly, juvenile imagery, a con game dressed up to look like
something admirable, like a suit and tie hung on the manicured ass of a donkey.
Consumerism says, “Buy this fancy-looking overpriced car or house, and
spend the next 20-30 years of your life paying them off, so that you can look
like a, “success” to your neighbors. Your neighbors are in turn playing the
same absurd game, as dictated by what they see every day on, “the
tube”. Thus civility dies, rational conversation turns to petty posturing,
community becomes a police state of locked gates, no trespassing signs,
manicured lawns, legal battles and fences
to “protect” each little would-be emperor and their host of “things”, from
competing emperors and “have-nothing trash”. By the same token, and through
the same empty, soulless state of greed and entropic egotism, goodwill among
nations becomes the meaningless posturing of world leaders through the
gibberish of political slogans, and the policy of “furthering their national
interests” at the cost of millions of lives, pointless suffering and entire regions
of the earth being stripped bare. Nothing in the consumer world is sacred
except image, (egotism) and the way
to, “sell your image” to others, is supposedly through, “things” which are
themselves, “images”… ones that supposedly confer, “worth” in the eyes of
the deaf, dumb and blind.
The consumer world, in short, is a social landscape painted by corporate con
artists, and made reality by the willing. Statistical knowledge of human
reactions has revealed more about what NOT
TO SAY about a product or service, than what its’ actual practical value may
be. To pull off their “sale” of largely bogus and unneeded goods, (read SCAM)
it is in the best interest of the corporate world and the mass media which
caters to it, to keep the public in a perpetual state of
ignorance and sheer stupidity. The “logic” of this practice is simple…if you’re
a con artist offering something whose real and practical worth is nowhere near
the price you’re asking, then you must “cultivate” your market of potential
buyers (dupes) by making sure they are exposed to the
full range of mind-destroying practices of education, advertising and social
conditioning known to the modern science of propaganda. In so doing the level
of manifest intelligence of the public has become so degraded, that not only
will the average person fall for literally ANYTHING that is presented with the
appropriate song and dance, they have been conditioned to actually be hostile to
questioning of any kind. “Why ask why” a recent beer ad asked, “because you
work hard and you’re worth it”. “Why ask why” is indeed the very epitome of
the modern age, because it is the one question the modern world cannot afford
to ask, and still keep things the way they currently are.
But things simply CANNOT remain as they are, regardless of all the pathetic
assurances to the contrary in popular media. This is a mathematically
irrefutable FACT. Consumerism is by nature ALL
DESTRUCTIVE. It is a parasitical process of hysterical beliefs which
essentially values NOTHING but shallow ideas of self indulgence at the cost of
ALL ELSE. It assumes, arrogantly, that man is at the center of the universe. It
promotes the idea that humans are the personal darlings of God Almighty, and
that our personal indulgences outweigh the value of all the plants, animals,
facts and natural laws of the universe. “…Because you’re worth it” is the
catch-phrase of that world, and through this thinking, supposedly any dark
deed is deemed acceptable, any destructive occupation for the sake of a
paycheck justified, and any war made glorious for the sake of, “national
interests”. In the end, which by the way is not very distant from now, the
consumer mindset will be forced to cannibalize itself, wherein the consumers
will be consumed and nations fall into ruin. To say that the consumer world is,
“unsustainable” is an extreme understatement.
It would be more accurate to say that consumerism is a soulless state of
desperation, whose degree of inner lack is directly proportional to the
unquenchable desire to try to fill that lack with meaningless material things. It
is a very foolish belief system which can only subsist through denial and
manifest stupidity. This system is, as we speak, pressuring nature and nations
alike, with households and persons reeling in confusion, to produce ever more,
earn more profits, secure more resources, even while those very practices are
destroying nations, households and persons, and even while those very
resources are rapidly running out. It is madness, pure and simple.
Because consumerism is at the very heart of the suicidal modern condition, and
because it is composed of greed and egotism by which society simply
CANNOT run effectively, (for obvious reasons) it is necessary to reject that
belief system in all its forms. It is necessary to reject the demeaning idea that a
persons’ social identity is that of a “consumer”, a word which literally means,
“one who consumes” and which does not qualify them to be anything more
than a worm. A worm “consumes”…a bacteria “consumes”, but human
destiny is about intelligent use of the mind and the exaltation of the soul in
wisdom. It is necessary to reject the paltry notion that life is defined as the
accumulation of objects, that money equals love, that clarity is irrelevant, and
that the universe holds no more meaning than can be assigned to it by any 30
second TV commercial.
It is necessary to reject the idea that all of existence is an exercise is
exploitation, that social relations are nothing but the posturing of images, (as
seen on TV) and that the acts of mass suicide in corporate industry, constantly
visited upon the good earth, are to be known as, “progress”. So long as such
values and beliefs prevail in society we are literally DOOMED as a race. All
other efforts beyond the rejection of these lies and petty falsehoods to secure a
better world MUST ultimately fail, so long as the consumer paradigm remains
in place.
To accomplish this rejection, this fundamental change of values and lifestyle, it
is our deepest need to be HONEST and to cultivate minds that respect a
factual, truthful examination of life, regardless of how we may feel about the
matter. There is literally NOTHING honest in the world of
consumerism…everything is either a lie or based upon lies. We must reject the
notion that we are the center of the universe, (another lie) which can do no
ultimate wrong, and that our personal, self-indulged feelings as, “consumers”
are far more important than the facts and reality which now
confront this world. Then and only then can we manifest a sane lifestyle, one
that is measured not by sales slogans or brand names, but by practicality,
efficiency, logic, truth, wisdom and real fulfillment in spiritual advancement.
Collectively, this is the true definition of “progress”, and
individually, the true definition of “success”.
Doing so is nothing less than the measure of our fitness to survive this century,
and further evolve as a truly intelligent race…
Matthew Webb visionquest@eoni.com
The World Mind Society