(Ir)religiosity

Interesting post. I have made a twitter post about this. Hope others find it as interesting as I did.

I found your blog entry while I was searching for a video of this commercial. When I first saw the video I couldn't believe it was real. It seemed like a sarcastic video about consumption mania. However it was real, and was blatantly materialistic. I guess subliminal messages in advertisements are becoming history since, now, we openly accept to be a consumption obsessed, wisdom and modesty lacking, materialistic society of idiots.

Hi Blake - So glad you wrote this and I found it by googling "good little consumer". This topic, and this video really hit home with me. This might be a long post, so bear with me.

I am a champion for my and others' rights as consumers for years. For over 25 years, I have found nothing but a cynical cheap corporate marketplace running our "good little consumer" lives. This is all portrayed very eloquently and creatively, yet starkly and realistically in the wonderful documentary "The Corporation". Youtube it, you can watch it for free.

Somehow, ever since the post-civil war days, Americans let the bad guys in the back of the store (originally referred to as the Robber Barons) run everything, co-opt functions of government, and in many cases, whether it was through unfair land acquisition for railroad "progress" (manifest destiny) or working children to exhaustion or death (industrial revolution). We somehow incredibly twisted our Constitution to give corporations human rights, making them unassailable, impenetrable, unstoppable, with it's only function to make profit with no qualms, no limits, and no regard for human beings, either those that work in it, buy from it or live near it.

As that documentary portrays, this has come at great cost. The best analogy out of the movie is that we had a huge mountain of resources and we are attempting to fly, and so we put on wings and jump over a cliff. We think we are flying, because the ground is so far down, we have no measure of the inevitable ground rushing up (escalating national debt and deficit, and destruction of infrastructure) and our inevitable crash (great depression, societal collapse, etc.).

Very cleverly, by controlling the media, the government, etc. corporatists (corporate power brokers and bureaucrats), singing the praises of capitalism, have and continue to orchestrate a system that financially, emotionally and virtually imprisons us good little consumers into a molded controlled life. We have the illusion of freedom, so elegantly crafted and portrayed in this discover card commercial as we have the freedom of what to buy and how much. But in a larger sense, we only have the freedom to choose between a lesser of many evils. What do I mean? With collusion, best illustrated by the airline industry, if airlines all "agree" on a best practice and line of thought that consumers don't really deserve to save money any more, and are expendable, we see new fees and charges across the board for things they never would have thought to charge us for before. Not only a fee for the second checked bag, but now the first on United. And soon all the others. And sooner or later fees for carry ons, and then a fee if you are too fat to fit in one seat comfortably, and then a fee if you go to the bathroom more than once, and now fees for water and all drinks, not just alcohol-based drinks. And why stop there, what about tarmac access fees, pilot schooling fees, safety prep fees, seat belt fees, call light fees, you see there really is no end to it. Some evil group of "airline consultants" sit in board rooms somewhere, deciding how to make all these horrible and unethical fees palatable and reality whether we like it or not - by getting all the airlines to collude.

What about government protections and regulations you say? Well, in case anyone hasn't noticed, the government entities that are supposed to protect us against this nonsense which is a direct result of collusion, have been decimated by corporate friendly Congress and President who have been bribed and paid off. Yes, bribery is a crime, but nope, nobody going to jail for it, it is now an accepted practice called "lobbying".

Airline fees are just one example. In every area we are being squeezed, controlled, and in every area, it's by an unfeeling, uncaring corporation.

Without trying to sound partisan, it really is a fact if you look that under the Bush administration, like none before, the Bill of Rights has been decimated (with Congresses help and support), and weakened by the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, and the net result of this is that we only really have the illusion of freedom at this juncture. Until those horrible anti-democratic pieces of legislation are undone by Congress or the Supreme Court (now almost 60% bought and paid for through Bush and other right wingers through prior agreements so they won't object to whatever he does next) we really can be labeled an enemy combatant and dragged off never to be seen again. The press, controlled by corporate interests, certainly won't cover that, so nobody else will ever know...they'll just keep being good little consumers, unaware that is waiting at some point for them too, if they stop being "good".

The chilling questions are, what next? Until and unless consumers start finding a way to take back Congress, and get completely rid of lobbying and Corporate ownership of our institutions (3 wings of government and the press), EVERY moment and sector and level of our lives is somehow negotiated or controlled by a corporation, which at its essence doesn't care about us...

A bleak future indeed...here is the denial free outlook:

- With our addiction to living on free easy credit, we will individually by and large have negative net worth, and with the current obliteration of our constitutional freedoms, we will return to debtor prisons and 20 hour work days to pay it all off, destroying social lives, family, careers, indeed the whole fabric. This "enforced profitability" will really be irresistible to corporations - just think, a captive audience they don't have to even advertise to any more...

- Up until that comes to pass, With RFID technology retail corporations will track, database and manipulate not only every single thing we buy, but indeed, everything we think about buying, look at and initially pick up off the shelf to inspect. We will get nags from a "helper" screen in our cart asking why we put it back, why we didn't pick another brand instead, why we didn't get 40 for the price of 10, or helpfully that we have $30 balance left on the $1500 credit card line, go ahead and buy it! The tracking won't stop there, we will be hounded in our email and on the phone directly by Colgate, Ragu, Maybelline, Proctor & Gamble and other retail-telemarketers about why we didn't buy their product instead and encouraging us to buy theirs next time. If you look at the number of different producers for each category of product, this is 24/7 harassment level activity on our phones, our email accounts and our chats. But corporate vans will also drive by our houses, knowing the whole balance with remotely scannable tags of what we own to devise even further invasions in a myriad of yet unknown "creative" ways. Our buying habits, all creatively indexed by companies like Google and ChoicePoint, will come back to haunt us at doctor's offices (well, we know you eat pizza and cereal 97.46 percent of the time, and so it looks like you have a heart condition now (24 hour fitness told us you only exercised 2 times this last month) so sorry, insurance won't cover that, have a nice day. Bottom line, there will be "universal" sharing of ALL of our consumer behavior by all corporations. There will simply be no privacy, and no separation, there will be an ever present experience shaped collectively by all corporations around us to control us and limit our options, or overwhelm us with so many that are bad for us, we can't decide... Further, we will be tracked by some kind of internal tags, so that day we decide we've had enough and want to speak out and act up, they will simply "pull the switch", and remotely activate the internal tag to release the toxin, shock us, whatever will "solve the problem". After all, we aren't seen as individual as rights, but inevitable "consumer criminal units".

- Travel will be limited, we will probably only be allowed a certain amount for certain distances, limited creatively by fees, credit, etc. With "Homeland Security" we will face an inevitable onslaught of overbearing unprecedented scrutiny on every aspect of our past, what we pack, where we are going, for how long, who we are seeing, etc. Mind you all of this has to be approved, checked on to decide we are not "threats" to some corporation, not just national security. Speak up once on a plane to a flight attendant? Get ready for 5 or 10 our check-in delays, airport and flight fee increases of 70% and some destinations being taken off YOUR table as a passenger...you see, you will have a "travel" report, just like your credit report, but it will never be available for you to review or fight or correct or change....Even if your work requires that trip to Tampa to visit the client, sorry, that's not allowed on your report, you might end up losing that sales job.

- So sick of all this, you decide you want to bury yourself in work at the office. No better there...you realize one day when you are called into the conference room that nothing is sacred or private, not one moment. Fran, the new office "efficiency" expert tells you in exhaustive detail in a 37 page report that you were only looking at the computer screen and typing or mouse clicking a daily average of "87.45 percent of the time". They require a 96 percent or better average. You also used an average of 2.65 bathroom breaks above and beyond your daily bathroom corporate allowance (the stalls and toilets have sensors too.) Furthermore, the sink sensors decided you didn't adequately wash your hands some times, and others, you used 34% too much sink water. You also parked outside the lines of your parking space 6.7 percent of the time, when that is really only allowed 1.7 percent of the time. Oh and break time - your worktime application on the computer caught you coming back late an average of 7.8 percent of the time, and you were late for work 8.9 percent of the time (no, it doesn't matter that you called in to your boss to let HIM know...). Fran concludes you just aren't "perfect" enough of the time and you are officially on "Stats probation". You see, it doesn't matter you brought in $1.2 million in sales for the company, you stayed overtime for 34 hours that month, and saved a critical client or deal, Fran the stats Nazi is your REAL boss....and on your way out of the room, Fran calls you back for a moment saying she's sorry, she forgot to mention that the company's phone-based voice inflection monitoring system revealed that you had "unfriendly voice and stress indicators" 34.2 percent of the time, that that would HAVE to change immediately and be brought under 5% of the time or that would mean instant termination. Have a nice day. Just as you think of finding another job, you talk to a friend in the same industry who catches the light rail the same time of you, and hear him complain about Fred, THEIR company's stats nazi, and how he had to listen to Fred compare his current stats compared to those on his last job. You see, all stats nazis have a permanent job performance database on you from all jobs, so they are collectively managing not just your performance there, but everywhere, in the past, and in the future...

- Seeking refuge from the store and the airport and work, you come home to your loved one. You find more srutiny there, as your wife or partner pulls up your tv viewing habits from your cable company and your store decision habits from the frequent shopper card website history. She just doesn't know why you keep watching those shows she can't stand (even when she's out of the house) and why you keep buying that brand of salad dressing she hates. She TOLD you about that! Why can't you listen? Between that and the purchase decisions you made on the last vacation, she is just feeling you don't have enough in common any more, and wants a divorce...after all, she is a consumer too, and consumer compatibility is everything, and she has options, she hopes you'll understand. You just aren't everything you claimed in your online dating profile. She lined every thing up and your claims in your 100 point dating profile don't match everything in your credit report, shopping report, and computer browsing activity report, which people are now required to make available to each other when they get married...

- Not knowing how to deal with all of it, you go to see your therapist, who tries to help you work through your anguish and anxiety. You start to discuss your hopes and dreams one day...but then he says he's sorry, hope and dream work is not covered in your plan, you'll have to steer the topic to more serious typical problems the health insurance plan pays him for...

- On the way back home for the night, you seek release by blaring the car stereo as loud as you can and letting it all hang out. One problem, you have reached your monthly "listening allocation limit" and are out of "entertainment credits" on your stereo. You apply your finger for the bio scan, and speak your credit card last 4 numbers to refill it. Just as you are halfway through your first song, it cuts off right in the middle for the 15 commercial set, before you are allowed to hear the rest of the song. After all, you didn't opt for the commercial free radio package which costs 70% more in order to hear complete uninterrupted songs...but further, you turned the volume up too loud, exceeding the decibel limit, and the radio company transmitted this information to the nearest police precinct, and soon you see the red and blue lights flashing behind you so the heavy handed officer can chastise you for "listening over your limit" and giving you a "decibel ticket".

You see, we are all collectively walking into this maddening insane hellish consumer nightmare future. It is being designed deliberately, one little subtle and gradual step and nuance at a time to eventually long term bring us into this ultra-controlled and tracked non-free virtual prison existence.

So, I take great offense at this presumptuous little Discover commercial telling me what my life and existence is like, and painting this false rosy little picture, telling me what my freedoms and choices are, when corporations like Discover really have only a narrow view of us - as money income units. If we aren't spending enough on their card, they invest in advertising to get us (manipulation revenue) so we can "come in line" with their quarterly profit and investment projections.

I take offense to inspiring speeches by politicians who in the end either deliberately or naively end up delivering us more of the same and in effect changing nothing.

I take offense to a government and a corporate society that uses my labor and my money and my energy to benefit, and offers me nothing in return but control, and limitation and "telling me what my options are".

Yes, we live in a tyrannical corporate state, where our limited freedoms and options are decided in hidden conference rooms, and applied through fees, fines, signs and policies. And if that is not enough to control us, yes, laws, records, reports and mandatory actions.

Now, how do I keep from staying cynical? I remember that we aren't there yet, there is still time for us to stand up in overwhelming numbers and band together and fight, because indeed, corporations and governments are still afraid of that to some degree for now. I think people just aren't hurting enough yet individually and collectively to band together and change things. I would have thought the last 8 years would have given them enough clues...but no.

That is one great flaw in America - we seem to wait until things are to a crisis point before we act. If we are not careful, the grim potential reality that I portray above will certainly envelop us, and when it does, it will then be too late to act together - for to do so then would either mean we would be individually turned off and taken "off the grid" or we would have to shut down the grid completely, and that brings with it some other potentially cataclysmic ramifications...

Scott

For a broad historical overview of those called to manipulate econom(ies), check out "commanding the heights" on PBS.org -

I think Jesus is pretty much a socialist, interested in the coming kingdom of God, calling us to participate in the common good, manifested by faith working through love. Isn't there something called a Year of Jubilee that is familiar in culture/OT bible?

As for the current cycle of self appointed commanders of the US economic "heights/plights?" . . .

The culture of consumption began not so long, long ago and in a galaxy only as far, far away as Bruce Barton's The Man Nobody Knows, which is reshaped with addicitve regularity by things like The Prayer of Jabez for Pets (has it come out/sold out yet?) and as you aptly identified- this intravenous Discover card I V drip...

Less is more.