In Culture Jam, by Kale Lasn, the founder of Adbusters magazine, he attempts to show the reader what our mass media has been doing almost without our awareness.
When the average American thinks of consumerism, we believe it is the promotion of the consumer's interests. What Lasn believes is that we're being told what our interests are and to buy into those false interests. We've become disconnected with ourselves and our own interests to fit those that our corporations have designed for us. He uses an example of taking your family to the forest for some alone time to brave the elements and come closer as a family, but after only a few short hours
becoming so bored that you begin self-destructing due to lack of technology. Our children have become so reliant on consumerism that they can't possibly enjoy any of the senses you have to use in your most primitive state. After only a short while, they show signs of grief and withdrawal. He writes that we should prioritize the earth as number one, and get back to the basics of feeling that the earth is one with us. We've learned that buying creates happiness, and most of the time, we're living in a world we've created for ourselves through the consumer process. We became compulsive shoppers when we're bored with our lives, and we look for outside factors to fill those gaps.
Corporations show us these shocking and appalling images in order to jolt our minds into a way of feeling, and over time we just become numb to them, forcing the media to come up with another "drug" to feed to us in order for them to achieve the same success. After reading the book, it became clear why there is so much to criticize in the American culture, but I believe learning how to balance the array of options we have at our disposal and becoming conscious consumers is still better than avoiding TV, computers, etc.
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