Learning to consume properly: for each other’s sake!
Question from the Internet:
“What is the term for when society is made to believe a non-scientifically proven idea which then leads to the pushing of products for our consumption; i.e. "fresh" and "clean" breath being perceived as minty, so we buy mints, breath freshener etc.?”
We don’t even need “pseudo-science” to push consumption. It is enough to say that a certain celebrity is wearing, using a certain product and we flock and buy it, people pay millions of dollars on auctions for things that supposedly belonged to a famous person.
Our gadgets, phones, computers and cars are sold with functions, specifications we can’t even comprehend, use or enjoy, as for example 3D TVs, refresh rates, resolutions are reaching levels, providing an experience we can’t even discern, access with our natural senses.
The bottom line is our insatiable desire, already yearning for more, to have something others have and to have more, greater, cooler, more expensive then others.
It is this insatiable, selfish yearning that drove our development out of the animal level, fueled our inventions, explorations “for our own glory”.
Unfortunately today it has become mostly shallow, restricted to the all-important consumerism, while in other respects we are moving backwards.
This is “intentional” from Natural evolution not in a “human” way but according to Nature’s laws. In order to resume positive, constructive Human development, we have to learn how to use our inherently self-fulfilling, self-justifying, exploitative desires in a new way: for the benefit and progress of the whole collective.
This is what our new, globally integrated, interdependent conditions require, as without the new, mutually responsible, mutually complementing connections, receiving for the same of each other through a unique arrangement called “mutual guarantee”, we will not survive.
Evolution demands us to become “fit to survive”, meaning fit to integrate into the completely interconnected, interdependent system.
Our Human advantage over the rest of the Natural system is that we have to achieve this integration consciously, methodically, by it own efforts!
Our insatiable desires can’t be suppressed, erased, they will constantly grow. But through the purposefully built “mutual guarantee” - which we copy, learn from Nature’s integral system - we can channel, harness these desires the right way - “right” according to Nature’s laws.
