The Consumer

The term 'consumer' is so overdue for a diaper change that if I had a dollar for every time it was bandied around, I'd surely have blown that money on something forgettable. After all, what else am I here for? Despite our vast cultural and innate differences, a single word can ostensibly shrink-wrap all human beings into an exclusive category through the commonality of purchasing goods and services. Just like animals, people share the biological trait of converting oxygen into Co2, yet the term 'mouth breathers' would probably seem offensive, because I'm actually way above that - I'm a consumer. I live with the assumption that a stable and healthy society can be tuned to the frequency of jobs and products so comfortably charged in to the collective psyche, that I should probably never feel any conflict of interest buying anything at all. I'm not just talking about material trinkets, knick-knacks, gimmicks or one of those crappy house-cleaning robots to stub your toe on, but anecdotes, witty memes, haikus's, inspiring quotes, jokes, sayings and any video with cats regurgitating hairballs to house music. I'm a self-gratifying machine, absorbing indiscriminately. I can be serenaded by the news, ingesting micro-verses of car accidents, genocide, gossip and bridged to ads for anti-depressants in the same breath - impulsively plugged into the consumer chorus, ready to recoil those urges in a store somewhere, anywhere.
At the cusp of my imagination and hard-work I might create something that could be praised, or conversely critiqued into confetti, and in lieu of it all, there's no possibility of it being as second-rate compared to what I do with my wallet, daily. However selfishly or carelessly I buy, there's zero chance of any awkward conversation or a surprise intervention surrounded by concerned friends and family, even if those khaki pyjamas I bought were sewn at gunpoint by starving lepers.
Speaking of points and guns, it sucks to be a trade unionist in Columbia. I found this out in detail about 4 years ago after listening to a guy speak through a translator about his experience representing Sinaltrainal; a company that produces bottles for Coca Cola. Since the early-eighties and the dictum of Chicago-school economics, aggressive free-market policies have been rammed down South America's throat like a duck on a Foie Gras farm - allowing US corporations to not only skirt pesky environmental and wage legislation they might be encumbered with at home, but also to bypass any democratic interference. South America has a strong history of socialism, so the rise of unions fighting for livable incomes is seen as an affront to multi-nationals. Around 2,500 trade-unionists have been killed there in the last 20 years according to Amnesty; more than the rest of the worlds countries combined. That's not even mentioning thousands more who've been arrested, tortured or incarcerated as 'political prisoners'. At the vanguard is Coca Cola who've not only been accused of environmental malfeasance in there production standards, but of violently quashing grass-roots labor movements through the use of paramilitaries and death-squads. Whether this is being arranged through corrupt back-channels of the govt hasn't been proven, but an honest job description for any TU may as well read something like "Union Rep needed for indefinite amount of time to help raise wages to subsistence. Efficacy may also come with abrupt job termination via surprise bullet in the face standing at mailbox, or front door or outside your local bar" - any volunteers? Canada has its share of political refugees, displaced or green-lit into asylum for rocking the boat in how we titillate our taste-buds or clothe our bodies. It's no surprise that this isn't an anomaly by one culprit, in one country - but a corporate philosophy spread across the ether, immune to patriotism and borders - where profit is enforced by any means, even bloodshed, and resisted in the dirt by people we'll likely never meet or read about. In the first world, national identity isn't sprinkled from history books any more, but through advertising's ability to mimic culture, while relentless imagery reflects back like a mirror, telling me 'I'm a good person, who deserves to feel pleasure and it's ok to look the other way, not that there's anything you need to look away from' *wink. Needless to say, I boycott Coke and a handful of other companies, so I convince myself I'm also capable of getting in the trenches every now and then, because bettering the world is how I roll. But that's pretty much bullshit! I stroll the gamut of cognitive dissonance, where convenience is the boss and deep-down, my conditioning dictates that I'd rather gargle broken glass than scrutinize every brand for ethics.
And there's a hell of lot of brands! In any chain supermarket, one might find about 50 choices of cereal, 37 different bottles of water, 72 types of dog-food, 43 options of crisps and at the risk of sounding like a communist, I've never felt personally validated by a bag of maple-flavoured oats with berries. It looked sexy as hell on TV, but it's just me sitting in my underpants half-dead at 4:30am with pillow-hair, trying to stomach this goop without convulsing. The free market is a mirage, and just like free-speech, it's manipulated into a manageable part of the spectrum. My 60 flavours of herbal tea runs parallel to that one choice of fuel to keep an internal combustion engine running, one source of energy to power my home, one interest rate moulding me into into a spender or a saver and two lame political parties to vote for every few years. Would you like the centrist or the other guy 23 feet to the right? Voting conscientiously with our wallets might be one thing that could alter the tide, but it's advocated as an activity for frivolity and repetition only, 'especially if we have any hope of keeping this damn economy alive, folks!' Spend, my minions, spend! Meaningless customer choices are so abundant it's overwhelming, while real fiscal alternatives that might change the chefs and not just the background music are eliminated by govt intervention and institutionalism.
For all it's potential, Australia's most recent election was shamelessly dominated by the halo-effect - with the middle-class maximizing their banality across voting booths so $30 extra spending money could go in their pocket every month - give or take. The previous govt had initiated a Carbon Tax, which was a fairly benign cost for the majority who could afford it and beside the extra revenue raised, it was at least an acknowledgement that for 22 million people, yes, the world is warming up and we burn farms of fossil fuels for such a small population! And what an uproar it caused. Traditionally, conservatives in a resource-based economy like Australia's (and Canada's) aren't exactly imaginative when it comes to job creation. Their tendency to be heavily lobbied by mining and power companies means that maintaining a false dichotomy between honest jobs and environmental care is in their better interest, which usually means you can't have your lake and fish in it too or whatever, so let's go and merrily dig some holes in the ground! Most voters don't really care if you dredge the Great Barrier Reef as long as it boosts the economy. Just keep those illegal refugees out and some bonus cash in my wallet for participation. Time and again we'll get two mediocre candidates with moderate policy differences, using the media platform and jostling for narratable sound-bytes on patriotism, values and self-reliance between commercial jingles. Even 'democracy' has become as trivial as small-talk and consumable as Toaster Strudle, because somewhere along the line lies became palatable and we got to comfortable to fight for more! Oh how the WW2 vets would roll in their graves.
So what should we do about it? I think making something of our own would be a decent place to begin. Who says it has to be high-art either? Start a conversation, learn the trumpet, build a tree-house, fashion a Rob Ford tribute statue out of chewed bubble-gum - it doesn't matter. Either we're creating idea's and experiences that are ours or most likely we're destined to consume uninspired echoes of someone else's, and this is the legacy that'll resonate to the next generation. If I do have children, should I tell them you can be anything in this life, just maintain the status quo when it effects you? Window or aisle, caff or decaf, Liberal or Democrat and paper or plastic. If we can't make ourselves important, then we can be sure as hell that no politician or marketing expert ever will. We're creators, not consumers, and only when we begin to recapture the terminology, maybe then we can start actualizing words into greatness.