Consumption at its best

I just read a not so long, but tideous book and I'm afraid it took me longer to read than it should have. Alright, so its harder for me to read when pregnant and falling asleep if a passage doesn't scream injustice in every line. The heart of the book, like most books except for Jane Austin's that always seem to end somewhat abruptly and anti-climaticly, was in the epilogue and I simply loved it.

I wanted to type up my favorite passages for further use and thought I would just make it accessable for any interested.

From Satisfaction Guaranteed by Susan Strasser 1989:


"Few consumers are familiar with either production or distribution processes; few consider their consumptin choices as matters of cultural or political importance. The marketplce is an arena of everyday life that most people accept uncritically--though perhaps sardonically--and think about as little as possible. . . Americans have become curiously comfortable with the idea that advertising manipulates them. . . The manipulation issue diverts attention from far more serious questions of power. . . More important, although twentieth-century rhetoric has conflated democracy with an abundance of consumer goods, the fundemental decisions about production are made on a one dollar-- one vote basis. Poor people are disenfranchised; in a culture of individuals who define themselves through products and product images, they hardly rate as people. . . On a systemic level, economic growth through marketing-driven production is fueled by waste: extravagant packaging, disposables, planned obsolescence and styling changs that create markets for replacement products. . . The ecological consequences of unlimited market creation demand a public discource about matters generally considered private: the things people buy and use every day, the ways they spend their time, the ways they percieve their needs. Although personal, our buying habits are not wholly private: they have public sources and public consequences. The mythology of consumption insists that consumers are kings and queens, that industry exists to serve us. Indeed, humble people do excercise choices and enjoy comforts available only to royalty in previous centuries. . . . But a belief in progress is more difficult to sustain in the face of environmental destruction, of market segmentation that codifies increasing class distinctions, and of a consumer culture that itself breeds constant discontent, depending always on individuals wanting more. Despte shopping malls full of things to buy, we are denied satsifaction that we identify--and romanticize--in our own past and in the activities of other human cultures: a sense of community, meaningful work, and time not consumbed by getting and spending."

Wasn't that splendid? sigh.