ask why so many people want to 'have', 'get' and 'buy' instead of 'be', 'do', 'learn' and 'know', and perhaps make a few people stop and think about it

I think I want to make a “Be, do, learn, know” drawing in order to remind myself to stop and think, and maybe to get other people to stop and think too.

Now that I’ve learned to do it and know how to see the have/get/buy crop up in my own life, I’ll be marking this as DONE.

Based on viewing the first part of this documentary alone, I would highly recommend that everyone even vaguely interested in the beginnings of Consumerism in America go see it. You can download all four parts from here:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=%22century%20of%20the%20self%22

This was a documentary made in 2002 by a man called Adam Curtis. In the first part, Pleasure Machines, was, to say the least, mind blowing.

In a nutshell: It all started with Freud.

No, seriously.

When Freud’s nephew, Bernays, got a hold of his uncle’s psychoanalysis book, he went to town on it. The market shifted from a needs based buying economy to a desires based on. He dressed the stars in clothing from companies and designers he represented. Stars promoted clothing as a form of self expression and individuality. Inanimate objects were portrayed as making you feel better for having them. Cigarettes were promoted as liberating, and creating women as equals with men.

Oh. My. God. Totally liberating and cathartic experience. Made me realize how much the consumer mindset has infiltrated my own life. I look at things as representative of the people. I buy my clothing to help show who I am. I wear my clothes because they are comfy and lovely, but also because I think, in some warped way, that dressing the way I do betrays something about me as a person. I am sated by my possessions into not caring about whats going on in the world around me. I am part of the guided mass of consumers.

Also. Psychoanalysis and mob psychology was used by the Nazis in the same way Bernays did, to consolidate the people in the Empire to be loyal, just like we were consolidated to become people who but because we want, not because we need.

k, need to watch the other parts now.

and this is not the kind of goal which one necessarily “completes”, so it’s time to take it off the list and make room for a new goal.

With the rise of a consumer oriented economy, the companies that propagate this idea have been using increasingly invasive in their tactics. We have advertisements on our television, in our movies, in our grocery stores (even printed on the food packaging), on billboards, in fast food chains, and on our computers. This continual bombardment of advertisement from an early age (see fast food kid’s meals, commercials during children’s programming) has implanted an unconscious desire in humanity to accumulate and surpass others in their material possessions. We have Cribs, which glorifies the mansions and lives of materially oriented celebrities, but we have nothing to talk about the people who freecycle, or members of religious orders who give up material possessions to gain a higher spirituality. Even in the matter of spirituality, the rise of scientology can testify to the rise of materialism. L. Ron Hubbard himself said that money was the way to communicate with people in the 20th century, and founded his religion with strong principles relating to money. In order to take a step away from this strong idea of materialism and needing to ‘have,’ ‘get,’ and ‘buy,’ we would have to force the advertising companies to become less invasive and less pervasive, allowing consumers to take a step back and recover from this mindset. We would have to place a greater emphasis on activity rather than inactivity, and perhaps create a new genre of advertising, that glorifies things that would encourage people to ‘be,’ ‘do,’ ‘learn,’ and ‘know.’

If I can ask myself this question and answer it by the way I live on a sustained basis I will have done well. How I live is more important than what I say.

last winter, I was with a friend and we ran into someone he knew. This friend of a friend started talking to us about peoples’ obsession with “get, buy, and have.” He had spent the his day (Friday after Thanksgiving) trying to convince people not to purchase anything. I had already fallen into autopilot that day and spent three dollars on my coffee inside. This year however, I vow not to purchase anything on that particular day. I encourage you all to consider this. Come to think of it, I will try to make at least some gifts this year and if I do purchase something it will be perfectly suited to the recipient. In the mean time I will work on being, doing, learning, and knowing more and more.

This is one of those forever goals – one of the ones you think you can never honestly check off as “done”.

Still, I think one of the biggest achievements is having the right goals, rather than having accomplished the right ones. And I can honestly say that these days, when I ever stop and ask myself what I want, it’s more often to be happy, to live a balanced life, to be the kind of person who would… where once it would have been to have this or have done that.

And I want to cut down my list to things I’m taking steps towards. So this one’s gone. Done. As much as a flawed human being can do it, anyway… :)

why I struggle so mightily with this problem.

gather around my lieblings… may life bring you effortless charm and strength so asking the question feels as easy as blowing soap bubbles and causes as momentous an impact as a tornado (but a constructive one, as opposed to a real one that blows off rooftops and throws sharp objects into soft bodies).

yours,
yo momma