Consumer Culture

Today we live in a world that is fueled by the market. We have this consumer culture that we live by. By this I mean all I see are people striving to have the newest thing, regardless of how long ago they bought the newest model. A big example is the iPhone; one year they release one version and then the next year a newer version comes out. Another example of our Consumer Culture is how people have to have the name brand of everything. The iPhone can be looked at as another example but what I am thinking of is how all the teenagers have to have Abercrombie and Fitch, or Aeropostale. But the way I see it what is the difference between a t-shirt from one of those stores or a store like Old Navy; besides one shirt costing $50 and the other costing $10. People are willing to pay for a brand these days and get caught in the hype of the brand. The culture thesis states how businesses are “circulating cultural commodities and manipulating people’s consciousness”. The three words that stand out to me and should stand out to everyone is, “manipulating people’s consciousness”. In our society everyone has to follow the trend and someone is not going along with that trend, they are looked down on from deviating from the consumer culture.

In our world today, we are surrounded by different outlets that feed us ideas of what we should wear, how we should look, what we should eat, how we should act, how we should live our lives. Often times we get caught in the flow of the consumer culture and live the life of society rather than live our lives as individuals. As a result of the culture industry blasting us with images of how we should live, these images both stimulate consumption and deflect critical thought. So therefore we can see that the culture industry is telling us how to live in order to make money. This can be equated to Lemert’s “Center” with how those with all the power, and money, dictate what the norms are of society.

 Through multiple media outlets, we view hundreds of commercials and things that companies want us to buy. These commercials feed into the consumer industry, influencing what society is. People make their decisions based on what the commercials say and what others are doing. But in the thesis of the culture industry, it is argued that the needs of people are false “when people do not arrive at them freely but rather have them imposed on them from the outside, through the subtle acculturation processes of capitalist everyday life”. Businesses are relying on their commercials to coerce you into buying their product, but what I think this argument is saying and what I believe is that even with the consumer industry telling us how to live, we need to make our own decisions based on what we actually need and not what we are told we need. If we choose based in the overarching consumer culture then we have not chosen for ourselves but for the business’s wallet. The thesis of the culture industry makes a good argument when they that “false needs are generated by the one-sided relationship between cultural producers and consumers” and that “people accept their subordinate relationship to the giant colossi of corporate cultural production as second nature”.

If we don’t change our ways, and start thinking for ourselves, our culture will be based off of what the businesses want it to be. 

Madness and Society

There are two kinds of people in the world; those who are sane and those who are insane. By definition, insanity means “the state of being seriously mentally ill or mad”. People have not always understood madness. Back in history, when mental illness was not fully understood, people looked down on the mentally unstable and viewed them as sick. Because mental illness was misunderstood, people with mental illness were locked away, out of sight of the rest of society. It was not always like this though. Foucault talks about how during the Renaissance, “the madmen were excluded but socially feared or persecuted”. He says that the people of this time saw madness as a “special kind of wisdom about the human condition”. It wasn’t until the Classical period of about the 17^th and 18^th centuries when the people with mental illness were rounded up and locked out of sight. Foucault states that “the mad were thus not only physically confined in isolated institutions and excluded from society, they were also conceptually excluded from the realm of reason and humanity”.

 The main argument thought of Foucault’s work the “History of Madness”, is that madness only exists in society. What he is saying is that madness is only a construct of society. Madness “does not exist outside the forms of sensibility that isolate it and the forms of repulsion that expel it or capture it”. Foucault has an example of how a certain asylum would have their patients practice social etiquette that was appropriate to English tea parties. Foucault saw this as a farce; the bourgeois society imposing their will unto others who are vulnerable.

I got to thinking though about Foucault’s argument and how it would apply today. So of course in today’s world we don’t have those insane asylums where horrible and cruel experiments were done on people, and we do not exclude those with a mental illness from everyday society. But what I am thinking of is how Foucault says that “madness only exists in society” and that it was the bourgeois setting the moral standard. This got me thinking of the “Center” from Lemert’s work. With how it’s those in power who dictates what the culture is and the rest of society follows. It’s the Center that tells us what’s right and wrong, and that we are the mentally stable ones and those who oppose us are mad or insane.

 A perfect example of this is how the people of America in today’s society see people who are Muslim. After 9/11, the government has led us all to believe, by use of media, that those who are Muslim or of Islamic descent are bad. That they are radical, mentally unstable, people who oppose our culture. This idea can go back to what Foucault was talking about with how madness only exists in society. Because Muslims are not like us here in the US, they must all be like those radical, mentally unstable suicide bombers or jihadists. Which goes to show that as a society we look down on people of Islamic descent for no reason, just like those with mental illness were looked down on; because they are not like the norm in society. A norm set by those in power.

Another thing that I took away from what Foucault had to say was that are people actually crazy?? The whole thing would be a subjective decision made by the collective norm of society. It is the people in power saying who is mentally insane, but whatever if it was turned around and the people who we see as "mentally insane" saw us, the "normal" people as mentally insane. It is all based on view point to who is "mentally unstable".This was just a small thought that I had while reading over Foucaults work.

Is technology a good thing?!

This needs to be seen!!! What is technology really doing to our society? Is it a good thing?

 

A few of my thoughts on things that stood out to me from the first six chapters of "A new kind of Christian"

"A New Kind of Christian"

By

Brian D. McLaren

Page 38

• The Christian author calling it pagan to have the cross and a dream catcher hanging together
• Dan says that his guess would be “that this driver respects Christianity but finds something lacking in the modern version that we have presented him with.”
• What if he has the two hanging there not because he feels Christianity is missing something but maybe he is searching for something else. As I wrote that I kind of sound like Dan, but the person good just see the dream catcher as something helpful, something to appease his sense of mind. Everyone has superstitions and they have certain things they do to make themselves feel better

Page 39

• Dan says in his journal “How many Christians do I know who could accept that there is a difference between ‘our version of Christianity’ and any other version of Christianity that could possibly be ‘right’?”
• He goes on to say that “while the modern version was right for 500 years, the modern version might not be right for the next leg of the journey”
• What I feel is that Dan is getting away from religion by saying that the modern version might not be what is right for the future.
• To me this sounds like a man not trusting in his faith and trying to think like a “man”
• Thinking like a man is what caused the whole reformation and the protestants breaking away
• Yes at the time the Catholic Church might not have been doing what is right but rather than fix Martin Luther just decided that making a whole new church could be better so he could pick and choose what he wanted. And many denominations followed.
• Man is fallible. We all make mistakes. I feel that through our pursuit of what’s right and wrong we forget to just trust in the Lord. No matter how hard we try we will not be able to understand how He thinks. He has a plan for us.  A good example of this was just this past weekend, the radiator in my friend’s car broke but thankfully I knew how to fix it. But then I got thinking about all the times I would help my dad work on our vehicles back home before I left for college. I would probably classify my family as lower class (but I am completely ok with that and I can address that in another post).  Because we did not have a lot of money we couldn’t just take our vehicle to a mechanic to get it fixed so we had to buy the part and do it ourselves. But I feel like God had a plan when we were upset out in the rain trying to get our only car to run again. He wanted me to learn how to work on vehicles so that way when it was just my friends and I stranded and all my friends were calling asking what to do; I knew what needed to be done in order to get the car running again. 
• To add on to that, I got to thinking that maybe we weren’t supposed to be on the road at that time.
• Here is something that I found that helps tell why things happen(From my beliefs)

Me (in a tizzy): God, can I ask you something?

GOD: Sure.

Me: Promise you won’t get mad?

GOD: I promise.

Me (frustrated): Why did you let so much stuff happen to me today?

GOD: What do you mean?

Me: Well I woke up late.

GOD: Yes

Me: My car took forever to start.

GOD: Okay.

Me (growling): At lunch, they made my sandwich wrong, and I had to wait.

GOD: Hmmmm.

Me: On the way home, my phone went dead, just as I picked up a call

GOD: All right

Me (loudly): And to top it all off, when I got home, I just wanted to soak my feet in my foot massager and relax, but it wouldn’t work. Nothing went right today! Why did you do that?

GOD: Well let me see….. the death angel was at your bed this morning and I had to send one of the other angels to battle him for your life. I let you sleep through that.

Me (humbled): Oh.

GOD: I didn’t let your car start because there was a drunk driver on your route that might have hit you if you were on the road.

Me (ashamed): …………

GOD: The first person who made your sandwich today was sick and I didn’t want you to catch what they have, I knew you couldn’t afford to miss work.

Me (embarrassed): Oh.

GOD: Your phone went dead because the person that was calling was going to give a false witness about what you said on that call, I didn’t even let you talk to them so you would be covered

Me (softly): I see God.

GOD: Oh and that foot massager, it had a short that was going to throw out all of the power in your house tonight. I didn’t think you wanted to be in the dark.

Me: I’m sorry God.

GOD: Don’t be sorry; just learn to trust me . . . in all things, the good and the bad.

Me: I WILL trust you God.

GOD: And don’t doubt that my plan for your day is always better than your plan.

Me: I won’t God. And let me just tell you God, thank you for everything today.

GOD: You’re welcome child. It was just another day being your God and I love looking after my children.

I must admit that it is easier to see God’s hand and be thankful for His work when we are given a clear and obvious blessing than it is when some frustration crops up in our lives, but as He explained to this man, He is always there. He promised us He would never leave us or forsake us. When things we consider bad happen to us, we need to seek His wisdom and try to learn what good He has for us in those bad things.

Are you able to be thankful for the lumps as well as the smooth rides? 

Halloween, Kids and Society!!!

          It's finally October which means its time for Halloween!!! I personally really like this holiday; so to enjoy myself this past weekend I visited a haunted house with some friends back home. In all of the advertisements I had seen for this haunted house, they all said it was not recommended for children under the age of 13. To my surprise though, there was a ton of little kids there. I could not believe what I was seeing; I even saw some infants there. Just to make it clear, the age group for the kids that I saw ranged from infants and toddlers to 13 and up.

        Now this haunted house was not that scary(at least for me, a 21 year old). It was more of a jump scare factor which was interesting.  Also it alot of gruesome,blood and gore, images. But the whole time I was there I was thinking of why was there so many children there? What is our society coming to that parents think its ok to let their children see that kind of stuff. I know my parents would have never let me see those kinds of things at that age. But that's the thing, I grew up in a different age.

         As I said in a previous blog, the technology we have today is more advanced than the technology that was available a few years age. I believe this is causing kids to become desensitized to a multitude of things including scary things. Technology allows instant access to virtually anything because of the internet. According to a study that I found, 25% of kids are using the internet daily by the age of three.

http://www.edudemic.com/technology-for-children/

         To me this is an alarming statistic! I personally do not think kids should be able to do this. It can cause them to experience things that are meant for adult vision only. And because many kids now have iphone's or smartphones, they can look up any thing any time. Just the other day I heard of a news story about these two 12 year girls who attempted to kill their "best friend" as a sacrifice to Slender man. (For those who do not know, Slender man is a factitious horror character).

         I want to come back to the scene that stood out to me the most the other night at the haunted house. Along the pathways were scary scenes for decoration. In one area there was a scene of these two people being impaled, with the pole coming out of their mouth. It was a very gruesome sight and if I was a little kid I would have believed it was real. But at this decoration area, what I see is a mom and her two sons getting their picture taken with the impaled bodies, as if it was like a normal family picture. And by my judgement, one son might have been 9 years old and the other maybe 4 years old.

         I believe many things could be to blame for this but what I believe is it is a mixture of everything. Media defiantly has a role to be played in this seen. Technology also has something to do with it. But I just can not wrap my mind on how we can go from a happy family picture in a pumpkin patch, to a happy family picture with impaled bodies in the background.

Maybe its our society as whole shifting its thoughts. Going from modern thought to post-modern thought??

I will continue to contemplate this because it really shook me seeing all the parents allowing little kids see adult things.