(no subject)
I want money to buy me a good story. Ikea furniture, or even walking into Ikea, makes me feel like a confused cow and sick to my stomach. It's like being in a poorly written romance novel full of flat, dowdy characters. Nothing symbolic, nothing mysterious.
about the change in America from the Victorian era of saving money and restricting impulses (sexual and otherwise) to the consumer self who is "soothed, organized, and made cohesive" by being filled up with food, objects, and celebrities. Cushman blames psychology and advertising as tools of the financial power structure that created the consumer self by preying on humans' abiding feelings of insecurity and doubt. Credit made us more interesting and glamorous and more competitive with one another even if the things we purchased never did deliver the promised redemption of saving us from our limitations.
In all of this, aren't we losing the intrinsic value of just being an awkward human being who wants to eat a half-decent burger and drink a glass of water? It drives me nuts, especially because we're heading into the straits of value-diminishing times. If my whole function is to acquire and consume, and my means to consume and my ability to consume are diminished, then who am I? I'm an empty shell with some designer furniture that I'm still trying to pay off. I'm a clothes hanger with a stupid grin and a God in the closet. I'm bloated and bored, and too out of my own body to know that I'm numbed out and half dead. This is where the American business model of modern living has led us-to this place where we fall apart, and try to fix ourselves by filling ourselves with not-yet-broken things that are getting so damned expensive that it's harder to get enough of them or to not notice that the pleasure they give is getting thinner.
about the change in America from the Victorian era of saving money and restricting impulses (sexual and otherwise) to the consumer self who is "soothed, organized, and made cohesive" by being filled up with food, objects, and celebrities. Cushman blames psychology and advertising as tools of the financial power structure that created the consumer self by preying on humans' abiding feelings of insecurity and doubt. Credit made us more interesting and glamorous and more competitive with one another even if the things we purchased never did deliver the promised redemption of saving us from our limitations.
In all of this, aren't we losing the intrinsic value of just being an awkward human being who wants to eat a half-decent burger and drink a glass of water? It drives me nuts, especially because we're heading into the straits of value-diminishing times. If my whole function is to acquire and consume, and my means to consume and my ability to consume are diminished, then who am I? I'm an empty shell with some designer furniture that I'm still trying to pay off. I'm a clothes hanger with a stupid grin and a God in the closet. I'm bloated and bored, and too out of my own body to know that I'm numbed out and half dead. This is where the American business model of modern living has led us-to this place where we fall apart, and try to fix ourselves by filling ourselves with not-yet-broken things that are getting so damned expensive that it's harder to get enough of them or to not notice that the pleasure they give is getting thinner.