As television becomes more profitable by playing into vices rather than virtues, society slowly degenerates. Consumerism and Hedonism have become our new patron saints. Even in the South where churches seem to outnumber the very population itself, new corporate franchises are on the verge of outnumbering them. Small rural town pepper throughout the countryside, desperately clinging to archaic paradigms, suddenly find themselves losing their grip against the tugging new order.
With each successive generation, older paradigms are dismantled and newer one are constructed. The new world order will eventually over-shadow the old moralistic paradigms completely, and replace them with the shiny new god of capitalism. “Consumer” once a word spoken with condescension is now fully acceptable and spoken with pride. Religion once shaded society with morality. It has since lost its position in the watering line to the sprout of exploitative capitalism. This new kudzu now binds all inhabitants through economic control. Conditioned to consume; conditioned to view credit as a virtue; conditioned into economic slavery.
It will not be long before churches are bulldozed to make room for pawn shops, and the Shylock’s payday advance loan establishments. The yokes of are now being replaced with the yokes of compounded interest. The changing of the guard now takes place with a system much more lucrative to the most effective persuaders. Individuals are now brainwashed with the overabundance of commercialized propaganda.
The modern-day fools buy into all of the ads and marketers’ promises. Foolishly, pissing away hard earned money on frivolous items. The fool who lives it up every Friday without reminiscing about the incremental laborers that it took to acquire his lump pay. The same fool, who both drinks in the lavish joy that cashing his paycheck brings, and then drinks to the sorrow that spending it all it brings. The economic slave who has no real sense of value. The fool who instead of judging the value of an item by its merit, instead judges merely by the amount in his pocket or line of available credit.
Persuasion channeled through issued morality may be different than persuading people to happily become indentured servants; however manipulation in any form is still control. I guess the real difference is that one form attempts to save the soul, and the other attempts to sell it. In either case, we have options. We can open our eyes and think, or we can become socially compliant, and follow the longest lines. For ignorance truly is bliss… to the merchant.
The goal of the consumer program is to keep people enslaved to the very system, which ‘sold’ them their chains.
Source: “Consumerism (The Master Program),” from The Virus, by Thorin
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