... CONTINUES.

History is filled with examples of wars, invasions, genocides, and all manner of abuses of power that have been waged by men and women who desire to steal what they do not already possess, and in this way, it is easy to see why it is so widely assumed that humans as a race are implicitly competitive, acquisitive, and self-serving. Despite the implications of this evidence, however, this is simply superficial and untrue. I believe that the best way of explaining this is through a particularly excellent quotation, which came from the Belgian economist Bernard Lietaer, who worked closely on the creation of the EU currency system, and who succinctly summarises the issue:
“Greed and competition are not the result of immutable human temperament; greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the money we are using. We can produce more than enough food to feed everyone, and enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The job of the central banks is to create and maintain this scarcity, and the direct consequence of this is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive.”
- Bernard Lietaer

What exactly does Lietaer mean by this? Firstly, he points out that greed, competition and all similar characteristics are ‘not the result of immutable human temperament’: in other words, they are in no way fundamentally incorporated into the human race, which in turn means that they can be changed and removed. Secondly, he addresses their true origin: ‘the money we are using’. Essentially, his point is this; people are conditioned to be greedy and materialistic because monetary-ism is designed to create competition through scarcity: if there isn’t enough to go round, people will work harder in order to obtain that ‘stuff’, even if it is at the expense of others. This is why people become greedy, or, as Lietaer poetically puts it, why ‘we have to fight with each other in order to survive’.

How, exactly, have we been manipulated to believe that our wants are infinite and that our greed is primordial? Modern culture is, in fact, riddled with institutions that perpetuate this myth, although we rarely stop to question either their motives or their methods. Perhaps the biggest contributor is the advertising and marketing industry. Their simple procedure is to make people feel inadequate, inept, and inferior because of what they do or do not own, and then offer their particular product as the ‘cure’ to these insufficiencies. They constantly bombard the population with messages and images of models and celebrities who are ‘better people’ than you because of the labels on their clothes. Vast expenditure is used to achieve this: ZenithOptimedia reported that over $542 billion will be spent on advertising globally by the end of 2010, whilst “it is currently estimated that a child sees more than 40,000 television commercials a year”. The simple fact is that, in surrendering to their suggestions of inferiority and purchasing their products, consumers are parading those labels on their behalf, becoming a walking advertisement with no earned wage.

The entire fashion industry, and the advertising agencies with which they work with, have created and installed an artificial system of values within all of us, convincing the population that a person can be deemed good or bad, worthy or unworthy, simply because of their ability to purchase the latest designer goods. Thus, we constantly lust for more: our idea of self-fulfillment and achievement becomes so clouded and illogical that we believe that the greatest sense of accomplishment in life comes from purchasing certain commercial articles. ‘Fashions’ are thus created: endless advertising manipulates our values, creating trends that people are forced to adhere to, simply out of fear that they will be mocked for failure to conform. We lose all sense of perspective and balance; the way we continually evaluate our self-worth on some imaginary, materialistic, commercial scale fuels our need to constantly purchase more in order to be the apparent best person that we can. The manifestation of our values is quantified by the fact that, in culture is, in fact, riddled with institutions that perpetuate this myth, although we rarely stop to question either their motives or their methods. Perhaps the biggest contributor is the advertising and marketing industry. Their simple procedure is to make people feel inadequate, inept, and inferior because of what they do or do not own, and then offer their particular product as the ‘cure’ to these insufficiencies. They constantly bombard the population with messages and images of models and celebrities who are ‘better people’ than you because of the labels on their clothes. Vast expenditure is used to achieve this: ZenithOptimedia reported that over $542 billion will be spent on advertising globally by the end of 2010, whilst “it is currently estimated that a child sees more than 40,000 television commercials a year”. The simple fact is that, in surrendering to their suggestions of inferiority and purchasing their products, consumers are parading those labels on their behalf, becoming a walking advertisement with no earned wage.
The entire fashion industry, and the advertising agencies with which they work with, have created and installed an artificial system of values within all of us, convincing the population that a person can be deemed good or bad, worthy or unworthy, simply because of their ability to purchase the latest designer goods. Thus, we constantly lust for more: our idea of self-fulfillment and achievement becomes so clouded and illogical that we believe that the greatest sense of accomplishment in life comes from purchasing certain commercial articles. ‘Fashions’ are thus created: endless advertising manipulates our values, creating trends that people are forced to adhere to, simply out of fear that they will be mocked for failure to conform. We lose all sense of perspective and balance; the way we continually evaluate our self-worth on some imaginary, materialistic, commercial scale fuels our need to constantly purchase more in order to be the apparent best person that we can. The manifestation of our values is quantified by the fact that, in the USA alone, over $250 billion is spent annually on fashion, whilst the US Department of Education’s 2010 budget was only $46.7 billion.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Author: Liam Blee - Source: thezeitgeistmovement.com