...is a question I often ask myself, and something I asked again yesterday after coming across a rather thought provoking article on the Guardian website. 'Do we want to shop or be free?' is the question Neal Lawson posed, going on to suggest we have become a culture of "turbo consumers, sacrificing the environment and our own happiness, while losing control of society".
It is a polemic piece, in the classic sense of the word, and Neal therefore pushes the argument to extremes, arguing that we are living in an unhealthy, totalitarian monoculture defined by and dictated to by consumerism; a totalitarianism we are complicit in perpetuating. In this world, Big Business and 'the market' are in the driving seat…and our Government does little to offer an alternative way of being, as they strive for both public approval (consumerism again: we'll give you what you want) and unsustainable economic growth.
This picture is a bleak one, with our materialistic desires painted as a self defeating hamster wheel of existence none of us can escape from.
But though I don't completely recognise this reality in my own life - maybe I'm one of the 25% pushing back on the consumerist wave - I do accept its inherent truth. Which is the irony and paradox of my chosen profession that I often find myself struggling with, dark night of the soul fashion.
I love my job, the interest value, the intellectual challenge and the opportunity for creativity. But I'm not always sure whether it is 'right' in some absolute moral sense; whether I simply spend my days reinforcing a damaging, image obsessed world view in others, a socio-political system where happiness is only found in the empty and ultimately self-defeating consumption of 'stuff', that I don't actually subscribe to myself.
Which I guess, if I was to be really negative, is just hypocrisy on my part.
Maybe it's time to take life in a different direction (something I also find myself saying every now and again).
But then again, it looks like it's going to be a nice day, so I might feel 'better' later!
Recent Comments