Consumer society

So last night I read up on what has happened in Sweden, the yearly riot has happened in the suburbs of Stockholm. 350 cars have been burnt and it's all a mess. It's easy to condemn the young people who did it. It was mainly immigrants, the people are angry and make statements such as - that they should be thankful that Sweden let them in. I've myself have been young and there were a few riots when I was younger.

I think many kids growing up are pissed off. We're so filled with energy but there's not much to do. It's very regulated and we weren't born for that, it turns into a clash in our brains. I'm talking about young guys here. They were meant to go hunting and come home with bruises and cuts, exhausted after 3 days in the forest. That's where you got your honor. This is something innate in guys and we die for chance to prove ourselves.

Now in 2013 there are absolutely no ways to prove yourself. I mean you can become the next counter-strike champion (and many do) but it doesn't touch guys as deep as real life action does. Sports work for many but for many it isn't enough. They look to adults and see how asleep many of them are and despise them and society.

You see there are no ways for these youngsters to grow up. Boys need great challenges to grow up. Society doesn't provide any paths these days. Military service is something really good for many men. Because it's still strict. You can't behave however you like. You get sent home or sent to jail. Which is good because society has become so pathetic at setting rules for their members. That's what growing up is about, getting rid of your un-orderly behavior. It might not make sense but if you think about it what is life about?

The whole universe is going towards disorder or higher and higher entropy if you prefer physic terms. But humans actually have free will and can move towards order. I see that as the deepest meaning to life. I feel for you if you don't agree but rules that remove dis-order are actually good. What if we had a soccer game with no rules. Would it be fun to play if the other team could bash your head in at any second or some big guy picked the ball up and ran away with it? NO, the game would be boring as hell.

That's why we have rules in society. It's good to give people cookies when they do good things but we have to be able to punish people when they express disorderly behavior because what if they are full and don't want cookies. This has worked out naturally and well for such a long time in human society's but has now broken down and no one knows what's right or wrong.

The best would obviously be if everyone was spiritually developed enough so there was no need for authority but as the world is; most people live on a spectrum where they need to obey to authority.
The prison inmate will need to have lots of limits on himself as will a 10 year old boy. But the person in authority should always guide and remove disorder so the person can move up on the scale and eventually not need authority as they have reached a level where it's just not necessary and they and everyone are better off without it.

People like having rules, people need rules so they know what's okay and not. But the authority that's setting the rules needs to always strive to remove and increase the freedom of the people when they are mature enough to handle it. That's why a person or state in authority have such a big responsibility.

Example 1. Your kid is 7yrs and he wants ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Do you consider him and adult and let him do as he wants? No, you tell him ice-cream is once a week only - Saturdays

The kid doesn't know what's best for him and has very little freedom. But you can see that the limitation is coming from a good place because eating ice-cream 3x a day would cause him harm.
You remove disorder from him.

But our society has become a bunch of kidults. Because we haven't grown up and instead of turning into a man or woman at 19-20 it happens at 35 if at all. It will happen later and later. Because growing up is uncomfortable. And our society has been hypnotised into consumer mode.

Things were pretty slow huh...

There is so much talk about obesity epidemics, sky rocketing divorce rates, increasing unhappiness, loneliness, consumerism, increasing crime rates, radical feminism, rape and global warming.

We try to fix these problems separately which is good but where does this stem from?

I've been reading quite a lot and then been letting my subconsciousness piece everything together to get to a common determinant. And I think I've come up with one big determinant. It may go deeper than this but this is as deep as I've gotten so far.

In the 1930's Freud discovered our deepest fears and needs. Processes that were in-programmed in our brains a long time ago and made us survive back in the cavemen days, things like our craving for sugar and our status seeking behavior. So Sigmund Freud found this out and Edward Bernays realized that with this information we could control the free thinking masses, by getting to human's deep fears and desires it's possible to control them. Make them addicted and they will do what you say.

So this started in the 30's what I can remember. Paul Mazur, a Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in the 1930s, is cited as declaring "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs".

So by making you into an addict in your early years you will forever be an addict seeking endless of highs and be bored with anything else. This is actually real stuff that was invented however mean it is. This beautiful documentary lays it all out of how it was done

It's 4 hours and absolutely top notch stuff on how it all went down. It didn't used to be like this. We're consumers of the highest degree the world has seen so far. We consume music, food, friends, clothes, shopping, relationships. All to get the next high! Because doesn't it feel good to buy the next pair of shoes...it feels so good...for about 2 days.

And what about the fact that quality isn't something that's valued anymore?
Do you know in Norway there is a law that says that you can get your money back if any electronic gadget breaks within 5 years from buying it. They enforced the law because manufacturers intentionally made crappy stuff that would break before their time so they could sell another mobile telephone.

Crazy very crazy. It's hard to see these things. Because we're just like that frog that would jump out of the boiling water quickly but if you leave him in the water and heat it up slowly he wont notice and he will die as the water starts to boil.

Okay so that is what has happened to us in the 20th century but what has happened in the early 21st century is that internet has really hit home. Now this is consumer society x10. I've met some young people that are so addicted to their phone because it beeps 24/7. They are unable to keep any conversation for longer then a few minutes.

When you start your way on an addiction your brain changes. Everything seems boring, lull and meaningless except to have certain parts of your brain fire up with the help of neurochemicals

Now I bet you could figure out the fact that a cocaine users brain would change pretty quickly. But you know the addiction to good food, shopping, consumerism, superficial relationships and facebook are pretty similar to something seen in cocaine users (that's purely on observation by the way). And when society push people to become addicts from a very early age you have a problem. Or if you're a really mean man or woman you see the opportunity to easier manipulate people for your own good??!

Anyways my reasoning here is that most people in the western society are trapped as addicts and that's why we're seeing all of these problems that I talked about in the beginning hint unhappiness. Everyone is guilty of enjoying some consumerism here and there but the scary thing is that on one knows that it's turning them more and more into addicts.

Quantity over quality - consumerism
The quick buck - crime

I think that other cultures quickly will follow in the foot steps of the Western world. Saudi Arabia has a reported 62% divorce rate. China and India will start to consume more and more as their middle class grows. Companies are more then ready to supply the people with stuff to buy and change the masses into addicts that love the high you get as an addict.

It's so unbelievable if you think about it, they found out our deepest weaknesses and then decided to use them and turn us into junkies the best they could. Maybe there wasn't any other way, I don't know.
I brilliant short book is written on the topic and it's so good that I instantly ordered another 3 copies and sent to my family to make sure everyone of them read it after I was done with it.
It's Mastery by George Leonard
If you have the slightest interest in any of this, read it! READ IT! It's one of the best books I've read and I've read over 200 books in the last couple of years.

I don't know what can be done about the consumer society, it's hard for addicts to understand the peacefulness that can be have by not having an addiction. By not having the craving for yet another high. And only god knows what will happen to us as humans as addiction is being put on turbo with the new iphone/ultra consumerism/addictionism.

Although I don't believe in religion per se I think it made a very good job in instilling morals and values in people. There were probably some very clever guys back then that realized this same thing and did the best they could with what they had. I will not comment about the result but I think their intentions for humans were very good. I think it's up to the individual to pull them self up and I think humans have this inclination but right now society is in war with these inclinations. Society makes it harder and harder to get rid of your addictions and rise above them.

Peace