I remember getting a government check in the mail after Bush Jr & Co started the Shock and Awe War. The clear massage - go spend while young Americans are dying, loosing their limbs and health, Iraqi civilians are dying, sacrifice at home is for suckers, your real duty as an American is to spend.
You are most welcome for the article, Mr. Pants (should I just call you "Cranky"?), and thank you for the Bernays link.
I was first introduced to the notion of "conspicuous consumption" during the anti-Viet Nam War years where my generation rejected the norms of the 50s and early 60s and that included the materialism recounted in Galbreath's "The Affluent Society" (1958).
In my later years, I learned about journalist Samuel Strauss who said in the mid 1920s, "Formerly the task was to supply the things men wanted; the new necessity is to make men want the things which machinery must turn out if this civilization is not to perish" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1924/11/things-are-in-the-saddle/648025/). Apparently, Bernays was influenced by Strauss.
As to your last paragraph, I think the desire for status, that the consumer economy exploits, exists in the un-self-reflective human being. Advertisers figured that out. It drives more of our behavior than relationships.
Good point re software, Ms. P. Tell me more about "the aware and self-reflective are manipulated by the digital economy". I'm curious as to how you know this? Two of my friends got their enlightenment training with me in the 1970s. It stuck for me, but I've seen them falling for the manipulation in the last few decades.
Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about American culture/society.
I remember getting a government check in the mail after Bush Jr & Co started the Shock and Awe War. The clear massage - go spend while young Americans are dying, loosing their limbs and health, Iraqi civilians are dying, sacrifice at home is for suckers, your real duty as an American is to spend.
In a consumption-based economy, if you don't spend, you hurt the economy and we all depend on a good economy.
And remember when we got COVID checks and Trump held them up for weeks because he wanted his signature printed on them?
In the 90тАЩs the saying was, тАЬJapanese (Chinese) are Producers, Germans are Savers, and Americans are Consumers.тАЭ
We've been a consumption-based economy since the 1920s. "Over the course of the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff" (https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/a-brief-history-of-consumer-culture/#:~:text=The%20notion%20of%20human%20beings,principal%20role%20in%20the%20world).
Shopping runs our economy, so of course they said that. Not to show the world our freedom, but to assure we didn't have an economic collapse.
You are most welcome for the article, Mr. Pants (should I just call you "Cranky"?), and thank you for the Bernays link.
I was first introduced to the notion of "conspicuous consumption" during the anti-Viet Nam War years where my generation rejected the norms of the 50s and early 60s and that included the materialism recounted in Galbreath's "The Affluent Society" (1958).
In my later years, I learned about journalist Samuel Strauss who said in the mid 1920s, "Formerly the task was to supply the things men wanted; the new necessity is to make men want the things which machinery must turn out if this civilization is not to perish" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1924/11/things-are-in-the-saddle/648025/). Apparently, Bernays was influenced by Strauss.
As to your last paragraph, I think the desire for status, that the consumer economy exploits, exists in the un-self-reflective human being. Advertisers figured that out. It drives more of our behavior than relationships.
Good point re software, Ms. P. Tell me more about "the aware and self-reflective are manipulated by the digital economy". I'm curious as to how you know this? Two of my friends got their enlightenment training with me in the 1970s. It stuck for me, but I've seen them falling for the manipulation in the last few decades.
Looks fabulous, thank you, Ms. Pants.