Money-Culture

There's almost nothing we can do together that doesn't involve money or consumer goods/purchases in some way. But are we actually pursuing our self-interest in consenting to this? Or are we hurting our self-interest by alienating ourselves, focusing so much on this?

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• culture
• consumerism
• money
• alienation

[conglomerate8]

(last comment)...So what do you suggest? Can we make a meta-story ourselves and can we live within the same artifact of ourselves happily ever after? If not what other options do you propose? ;)

[mikem1234]

We keep making new artifacts and pursuing new projects. And we stop fetishizing personal identity. We don't necessarily need a wider narrative other than our own humanity. Not that I'm saying we should be humanists all the way through....

[poppiedree]

I wonder what it is exactly that you think would improve if our social-relations (the casus with which the video started out) didn't involve money, but instead immaterial favours (just spending time talking). In a way that new way of 'spending' would be less 'free', since when you ''spent'' on someone (buy a drink, or a ticket) you show that you care, apart from the time you free to spent on the person. If spending would fall away, demanding (time) would become more important and less ''free''.

[conglomerate8]

@conglomerate8 The institutionalized knowledge of international usurers??! or one that has been sent down under no institution to the mankind? Whose truth is the real?

[conglomerate8]

@mikem1234 Nice quote. But I think the question is not whether man is active or passive, whether we are "engaged" in the universal curiosity or not. Its the question of whether the knowledge of which our engagement is driven by, is any authentic. Epistemology of our life, like, how do we know that we KNOW? Again I feel that we have gone full circle back to the point were we started, whose meta-narrative? whose epistemology? Whose methodology? & at the top of that whose knowledge is credible?

[mikem1234]

@conglomerate8 Quoting Baudrillard: "The puritan regarded himself, his own person, as a business to be made to prosper for the greater glory of God. His `personal' qualities, his `character', which he spent his life producing, were for him a capital to be invested opportunely, to be managed without speculation or waste. Conversely, but in the same way, consumerist man [I'hommeconsommateur] regards enjoyment as an obligation; he sees himself as an enjoyment and satisfaction business."

[conglomerate8]

@mikem1234 Exactly..and in my opinion when it comes to describing consumerism no one has ever put it in such a way that "Jean Baudrillard" did. He went as far as associating this culture to "idolatry", though he never used the exact term. It is embarrassment for the so-called religious clan that they have got trapped in this web of sin & yet they don't realize that. Look at how the axis of power is shifting to the east and Muslim market..Look how private bond holders are pouring the money there.

[mikem1234]

@conglomerate8 Consumerism tries to associate our authenticity - our true identity - with buying specific goods and having specific media experiences. You can't do things with your friends that don't make reference to it in some way. That is a form of power that operates. It defines our frame of reference.

[mikem1234]

@conglomerate8 Our religion has become the holy $ - the market place. One can also take culture in a secular direction, but rejecting the market religion - the one written in the textbook ('scriptures') of liberal and neo-liberal economists like Adam Smith and Milton Friedman. Interesting that you mentioned Foucault. He said the 3 things to look at are 1) power 2) truth and 3) the subject. A power exists because of these regimes of truth, and a subject exists because of its 'authenticity.'

[conglomerate8]

@conglomerate8 btw, I need to make it clear that when we talk about religion we are talking about main-stream religions. However in this conversation, my definition of religion is bound to scriptures only. Not its oral traditions or as has been known in the so-called mainstream Islam as Sharia law! These traditions are not genuine and they are man-made. So to make it short, religion = scripture, no word less or more off that.

[conglomerate8]

@conglomerate8 ...And I can see this hypocrisy. They mock and refuse to accept the God-given religion, but at the same time they strive to make their own religion. Now writings of michel foucault has shed a great light on this matter, especially in the archeology of knowledge when he brought up the notion of the "regime of the truth". So I will conclude that ultimately the question of identity is about genuineness of knowledge. Whose knowledge is genuine then? the creator's or its creation?

[conglomerate8]

@conglomerate8 ....the demand for BUYING personal identities. People are being marketed and the product of which they buy (identity) is "made in institution". So the purpose of globalization then within this context of consumption is to manage all these discourses in order to fake a "grand-narrative" and to create-impose universal identity. So you see that the argument is not the fact that humanity doesn't need religion. It is the fact that we want to make our OWN religion! (continues)