As the great sociologist Zygmunt Bauman denounced, "consuming means investing in one's belonging to society, which, in a consumer society, translates as being marketable". I buy therefore I am. Consuming is what identifies us as members of society, what increases our value and what drives the economy and the system. Chomski's philosophy of futility is so central to our lives that it is almost impossible to escape it.
Nothing and no one escapes this mercantile logic. Although apparently the caricature of the fashion victim branded in everything she wears or the yuppie boasting his sports car or the latest generation cell phone as phallic symbols seem to be losing ground, the market is colonizing other spaces that seemed beyond its reach. Take spirituality: Courses, books and all kinds of products ranging from chiro massage to chiromancy and from gestalt psychology to foot reflexology make us the same promise as the latest Calvin Klein perfume: to solve all our problems. Even holy water sells: H2Om is an American brand that, based on Emoto's research, sells the liquid element loaded with good intentions such as health, gratitude or will power. And every product is subject to fads: Yesterday it was Buddhism, today Sufism, and tomorrow Gnosticism. Are you still with Vipassana meditation? How old-fashioned you are. Today it's Big Mind that's all the rage.
But the latest twist was to reconvert the consumer into a product. One of the most determining characteristics of contemporary society is the reduction of subjects to objects. Members of consumer society are both merchant and commodity, subject and object. We all know that the free Internet is only apparent, because the currency of exchange is our personal data, browsing habits, the photos we upload to social networks, the geolocation of where we go, what we consume and when, our "likes", etc. In short, our life and privacy. As Nicholas Negroponte first said, if something is free, the product is you.
Probably the first sign of this trend was the so-called personal marketing. This is the application of marketing principles to the workplace. Everyone has felt like a commodity when looking for a job. The theorists of this discipline make this metonymy desirable based on the reasoning that in a hypercompetitive job market, it is necessary to differentiate oneself and sell oneself appropriately, i.e. to become an attractive product for employers.
The imperative of the famous business guru Tom Peters, Brand you! is easily extrapolated to all areas of our lives. We all yearn to be accepted and, better yet, desired. We would all like to be as indispensable as Google, as desirable as Apple, or as attractive as Nike. We all long to be a scarce commodity for others to fight over.
The first step to succeeding as a product is to improve our packaging. It is not enough to wear a particular garment or perfume. The subject-object must aspire to a unique and perfect body. Today an untuned body (through aesthetics, tattoos, piercings, etc.) begins to be a sign of laziness and social inadequacy. And then we rant about the barbaric customs of giraffe women.
The second step is to advertise ourselves properly. You are nobody if you are not on Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram, authentic supermarkets of people in which each user exposes their best attributes.
In reality, we are talking about nothing more than new forms for the old strategies of dating and mating. What is really new about the reduction of the person to a product is the turn it gives to human relationships, making them more and more similar to mercantile relationships.
If we use marketing strategies to "sell" ourselves, it is logical that we should want to resort to consumer strategies in our interaction with others. The secure, low-liability transactions we have as consumers are much more attractive than the complex and cumbersome human relationships. Again, the Internet is the perfect example of this new form of socialization: we look without being seen, we reveal what we are interested in, we are in control. Without risk or annoying interpersonal interactions, we define the criteria of our ideal partner and all that remains is to wait in the comfort of our room if the transaction is consummated. If something goes wrong, you disconnect and that's it.
Another characteristic of postmodern human relationships is their fragility. If, in the past, values such as durability were important to us and our relationship with objects was long-term, the liquid modernity defined by Bauman is based on incessant change. Heraclitus' quotes "Everything changes, nothing is permanent" and "You will not bathe twice in the same river" were never truer than in capitalism, an entropic machine that lives on change. Everything changes but everything remains the same. We always end up back at square one, ready to start a new game. In the end, the consumer is consumed. The watch that used to be passed down from parents to children as the most precious commodity is now quickly discarded as obsolete and outdated, and the family photo albums that were kept in the attic as relics of the immortality of our lineage are now replaced by computer files that are easily deleted in the more than likely event that the family breaks up. And it is with the same assiduity and detachment with which we change our cell phones that we change our families and jobs. Everything old is no longer useful, it has to be thrown away: partners, parents, employees. Desirable objects quickly become disposable objects. We are unceremoniously discarding everything that no longer satisfies us. And the fact that people have become objects of consumption exonerates us from any responsibility towards them. The superior can fire the subordinate and the bride can leave the groom without remorse. In our throwaway society, there is no room for sentimentality. Under the new logic, getting rid of something or someone should not be regretted but celebrated as an opportunity for new experiences, new pleasures and new adventures.
The devaluation of durability leads to the weakening of human relationships, the fragility of bonds, and the erosion of values once as important as responsibility, fidelity, and commitment. In such an individualistic world, the bonds between people should be as loosely knit as possible (can you imagine your parents uttering the catch-all phrase "I need more space"). It is not profitable to invest in employee training or loyalty when there is a queue of unemployed people ready to fill that job at a lower salary. In fact, the easiest thing to do is to close the company directly and go to another country where wages and workers' rights are lower. Why try to fix a troubled relationship if it is easier and more exciting to look for a new one. Change (of partner, of job, of residence) has gone from being considered a sign of failure to something applauded for what it indicates in terms of flexibility, dynamism or assertiveness. Today no one in their right mind seriously utters the words "till death do us part" in the same way that no one expects a job for life. And I hope you won't take me for a reactionary for whom any time in the past was better. New forms of relationships such as polyamory seem very interesting to me, and I am not against the platform economy that is increasingly causing people to have seven simultaneous jobs instead of one job for life.
Even our identity is not stable. We live under pressure to constantly reinvent ourselves. We have to change before we are changed by someone else. We bury the past self and are reborn in a new form, with new lips, a new cell phone and even a new unstructured family. We are the man of 1000 faces and multiple lives. Again, something that is not bad in itself and is probably a better life hypothesis than the corseted social roles of the past but in its most superficial expression has many dangers.
Our parents lived in an eternal future. They wanted possessions that would last over time and could be passed on from generation to generation (symbols of immortality, as Wilber would put it): land, houses, jewels, etc. They always had to think about tomorrow, a future so elusive that it never came: Saving to pay for the apartment, then the car, then the children's studies and then old age. The future prevented them from enjoying the present. In our case, the change and precarity that surrounds us make us live in an eternal present of perpetual dissatisfaction and insatiable desire. Some even try to mask our individualism and selfishness with pretensions of misunderstood spirituality. The present moment is the only thing that matters. Carpe diem, by hook or by crook. That is the secret of happiness.
The trap of the system is that, behind all its promises of happiness, its real objective is our dissatisfaction. A satisfied individual is undesirable because he stops consuming. We are constantly tempted with new products, new experiences, new sensations. Our happiness is more and more elusive and transitory. To be content with what we have (or what we are) is synonymous with indolence and laziness and, therefore, execrable. We are like hungry and insatiable zombies. The system educates and trains us throughout our lives in that way of thinking and acting. To be attractive and desirable, the subject-object must always aspire to be more and have more. And here we are also seeing an evolution in the forms (but not in the substance). If before the way to demonstrate status was material possessions (car, clothes, cell phone, house), now we have added immaterial ones. The most fashionable signs of distinction are "experiences" - for example, having been to the restaurant of the most fashionable chef or having travelled further than anyone else is what accumulates the most "likes" to our credit.
The clearest advantage of these post-modern times is that we have more freedom than ever. So many options to choose from, so many experiences to have. If happiness is the balance between freedom and order, the balance has tipped in favour of freedom. But freedom can also be a prison when it becomes the obligation to choose. The pressure of constantly having to choose, the multiplicity and transience of objects of desire, the incessant repetition of trial and error are exhausting. Order can be suffocating and boring. But order gives security and, in today's world, there are few things we can consider secure and reliable. We live with the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, not knowing what tomorrow holds. So much uncertainty takes its psychological toll in the form of anxiety, depression and stress. Our elders desired (and won for us) the freedom we enjoy and we envy the security of their lives. If, as Aristotle said, virtue lies in the middle ground... why do we always go to extremes?
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