Gregory Geboski:
> ... and, loony drug czars aside, the use of these consumer products doesn't
> come close to that of legal, advertised products like alcohol and tobacco.
> (They produce enormous profits per volume, though.) And without any real
> evidence to offer, I think, yes, an end to the consumerist barrage would
> have a positive effect on lessening the consumption of addictive products
> (at self- and socially-destructive levels) in society as a whole.
>
> I think the ubiquitous role of advertising and consumerist fantasies in
> shaping people's consciousness can't be overemphasized. The best recent
> treatment of this I've seen is a video called "Advertising and the End of
> the World," by Sut Jhally at the Media Education Foundation at the
> University of Massachusetts. The title sounds like snarky post-modern irony,
> but, ironically, isn't. It's a bit pricy for individuals, but it has a
> hand-to-hand distribution network and may be available at well-stocked
> libraries.
In the case of many products, it appears to be the advertising which the main item for the consumer and the material product a sort of fetish which invokes the spirits generated by the advertising, e.g. an SUV which, although parked in the car port and never driven any further than the mall or the industrial park, generates an aura of freedom, strength, outdoor heartiness, Rocky Mountain solitudes, glorious sunsets. In the case of the legal drugs, the aura generated by advertising pervades the immediate drug experience, modifying and greatly enhancing it: a beer is no longer just a beer, it's cute, sexy girls and boys playing on a sunny beach. The effect is so strong that well-advertised product can be significantly inferior in material terms and still succeed: consider Marlboro, Maxwell House, Budweiser, Microsoft, American cars.
But how are you going to take this away? It's not just the rich corporations you'd have to fight, but the consumers as well. The thing most people appear to want least is to be "at last compelled to face with sober senses [their] real condition of life and [their] relations with [their] kind." Especially with God still away on his long vacation....