Contemporary consumer culture privileges the
owners of the big corporations (shareholders) and functions most efficiently
for increasing owner’s profits when we live un-noticing lives. To be divorced from the making of the
inanimate objects that surround us enables the consuming populace to ignore the
waste and lack of fulfilment created by this system. The end point of the free market capitalism
practiced by the First World is that the actual goods are meaningless. Rather
than being a gathering of signs, a powerful distillation of ideas about
culture, history and community, the products of a pure consumer culture are
designed to cast off meaning. Consumer
culture works best when the objects we consume give off a range of signs all
leading to the universal meaning that consumption is valuable, makes us happy
and “happiness” is the end goal of any transaction. If we are to believe that consumption makes
us happy then the aspiration is to acquire and discard things in as rapid a
cycle as possible. This is the perfect
goal for a self-sustaining consumption culture.
But in this model “happiness” can never be achieved and the
environmental, social and psychological cost to communities is high.
