I don't like tourism, I never liked it, I don't even know how to explain it in a language that is not mine, maybe with a story, yes! A story will do! ...

Once upon a time gehre were two young American tourists, with Calvin Klein clothes, with Nike shoes, with Rayban sunglasses ,

with Nokia portable telephones, Sony digital cameras, JVC videofilmadores and Visa credit card, staying in a hotel and having traveled through American Airlines, hyperconsumers of Coca-Cola, Mc Donald's and Revlon cosmetics, ...

they commented upon hearing the screams of howler monkeys perched in nearby trees: "poor things, they howl with sadness, because they don't have a 'mall' nearby to go shopping".

Consume, consume, hyper consume, consume even if it is not necessary, spend money, shop, ...

... all this has become the bastion of the modern world.

Some, the inhabitants of the rich countries of the North and the wealthy layers of those of the South, do it without problems.

Others, the less fortunate, the vast majority on the planet, NO.

But they’re equally compelled to follow the steps dictated by the dominant tendency: whoever does not consume is out, is an imbecile, surplus, is not viable.

Even at the cost of getting into debt, everyone has to consume. How dare u contradict the sacrosanct rules of the market?

We could think that this story is a literary fiction (a bad fiction, by the way) ; but no: it is a tragicomic truth.

The industrial capitalism of the 20th century resulted in the so-called consumer societies where, insured and to primary needs, access to superfluous banalities

became the central nucleus of the entire economy.

Since the 1950s, first in the US, then in Europe & Japan, the provision of services has long outstripped the production of material goods.

And of course the massive luxury goods or destined not only for the assurance of ...

physical subsistence (recreation, non-unit purchases but for quantities, merchandise unnecessary but imposed by propaganda, etc., etc.) lead by far the general production.

Why this consumer fever?
You all dont care?
Are you not even aware?

We all know that poverty implies lack.
If someone has a lot, it is because another has very little, or does not have. In a more just society, called socialism, "no one will die of hunger because no one will die of indigestion," said Eduardo Galeano.

You don't need a PhD in political economy to understand this truth.

But contrary to what could be considered as a spontaneous solidarity trend among human beings, the one who consumes most yearns, above all, to continue consuming.

The attitude of the societies that have followed the logic of hyperconsumption is not to stop it, distribute everything produced with equity to favor the dispossessed, stop the merciless looting of natural resources.

No, on the contrary, consumerism brings more consumerism.

A dog from a northern middle-range home eats an annual average of red meat greater than a Third World inhabitant.!!!

#TruthBeTold

While many people starve and do not have access to basic services in the South (clean water, minimal literacy, primary vaccination), without the slightest concern and almost frivolously, incredible amounts are spent on, for example, cosmetics ($ 8 billion). annually in the US),

or ice cream (11,000 million annually in Europe), or pet food (20,000 million annually throughout the First World).

Are we human beings then stupid and superficial individualists, irresponsible wasters, empty compulsive buyers?

Answering affirmatively would be partial, incomplete without a doubt, we can all enter this crazy consumer fever ... the question is to see why it is instigated, or even more: it is to do something so that it does not continue instigating it.!!!

Which then leads to reformulate the current global economic-social order.

This madness cannot go on like this!!
Although it is true that in the prosperous consumer societies of the North, voices arise calling for a weighted social responsibility ..

rational consumption, alternative energy, recycling of waste, aid to the underdeveloped South, it should not be forgotten that these trends are marginal, or at least they don't have the capacity to really influence the whole.

Let us remember, for example, the hippie movement of the 60s of the last century: although it represented an honest anti-consumption movement and a questioning of social imbalances and injustices, the system finally ended up devouring it.

Incidentally: drugs or rock and roll, its insignia of the 60s and 70s, ended up being as many consumer goods, generating huge profits (not exactly for the hippies, by the way).!!!

Once consumerism has been promoted, everything indicates that it is very easy, very tempting without a doubt, to be seduced by its networks.

For example: polymers (the different forms of plastic) are a recent invention in history; in the South they were only known in the middle

of the 20th century, after they were already compulsory in the North, but today no one in their impoverished countries could live without them,& in fact,in proportion, they consume more there than in the developed world where there’s beginning to be a search for recycled material

For various reasons, to be fashionable?

A poor Third World is more likely to buy a plastic basket than a wicker basket. Once launched, it imposes its own logic from which it is very difficult to distance oneself.
It's "addictive," you might say.

In the same way, and always in that dynamic, let's reflect what happens to the car.

It is now widely known that internal combustion engines, that is, those that pay tribute to the monumental oil industry (in short), are the main agents causing the negative greenhouse effect ...

and it is also known that they cause one death every two minutes on a planetary scale due to traffic accidents, all inconveniences that could be solved, or minimized at least, with the massive use of public transport, safer in terms of individual and ecological safety.

A single motor can transport a hundred people, for example, but until the last drop of oil is finished there will be no vehicles powered by clean energy: water or sun, for example ....

An engine burning fossil fuels per person is not sustainable in the long term in environmental terms, but curiously, for the first twenty-five years of the current century, the large corporations of car manufacturers estimate to sell 2 billion units in the countries of the South,

and the inhabitants of these regions of the globe, knowing of the blots mentioned above and connoisseurs of the irrational nonsense that it means to move in cities crowded with vehicles, despite all that they are happy with the boom of these fascinating machines.

In that logic, then, whoever can, even borrowing for years, does the impossible to reach "zero kilometer".

All of which leads us to two conclusions: on the one hand, it seems that all human beings are too manipulable, too easy to convince (advertisers know this perfectly).

Nothing else tells us semiotics, or American-style social psychology focused on the marketing management of the masses.

If this were not the case, George Bush Jr., an alcoholic recovered quite unskilled in political leadership, could not have been president of his country twice

(thanks to a sensational video in his second presidential campaign, for example, that exploited irrational fears. of the electorate); or the corporal of the German army Hitler could not have led the "educated" German people to believe that he was a superior race.

and lead him to a holocaust of Dantesque proportions!!

But on the other, as a second conclusion, and this is undoubtedly the Gordian knot of the matter , the economic-social relations that have developed with capitalism do not offer a way out of this trap of human dynamics.

Big capital cannot stop growing, but not thinking about the common good: it grows, like a malignant tumor, in a crazy, disorganized, senseless way.

Why does the large company have to continue expanding?

Because its internal logic forces it to it; it cannot be stopped, even if that is useless in social terms.

Why do the millionaires who own their shares have to continue being more millionaires?

Because the economic dynamics of capital forces it, but not because ...

... that growth serves the population.

And that growth, precisely - as cancerous tissue - is done at the expense of the entire organism, of the whole social in this case, making us consume, consume the unnecessary, preying on natural resources, and becoming increasingly foolish

... manipulating our emotions through the marketing techniques to keep us buying.!!!

The tourists at the begining of the thread —>

“Poor things. They howl with sadness, because they don't have a "moll" near where to go shopping” ...

Dictating fashions, setting consumption patterns, forcing products to change unnecessarily with shorter and shorter cycles (programmed obsolescence), making those who do not follow these levels of continuous purchase feel a "primitive savage", ...

... with refined - and pathetic - techniques of commercialization (deceptive propaganda, media manipulation that does not give respite, forced credit), big capital, increasingly dominating the global economic-political-cultural scene on the planet,...

... imposes consumption more ferociously than the armed forces that defend it drop bombs about wayward territories that resist following that script.

Certainly, given certain circumstances, unstoppable "consumerism" could be considered pathological behavior.

In fact, in the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization, as well as in the Manual of Mental Disorders of the Association of Psychiatrists of the US, (DSM, version IV), appears as a possible form of compulsions .

And from this medical-psychiatric matrix, "compulsive buying" could be described as a specific diagnostic category.

Frequent concern about shopping or the urge to buy, which is experienced as irresistible, intrusive, and/or meaningless.

More frequent purchases than one can afford and objects that are not needed, or shopping sessions for longer than intended.

Without denying that this exists as a psychopathological variable ("It is calculated that compulsive shopping affects btw 1.1% & 5.9% of the general

population and is more common among women than among men), the voracious consumerism imposed by the system it is more than individual compulsive-addictive behavior.

In any case, it speaks to us of a "disease" intrinsic to the system itself.

If the young women in the example with which this thread was opened are so "stupid", frivolous & superficial, they are but the symptom of a disorder that moves behind them.

Disorder that, incidentally, is not fixed with any pharmaceutical product, with a new miraculous medicine,

... with another merchandise to consume, no matter how well presented and publicized it is.

It is arranged, in any case, by changing the course of history.

Sometimes i wonder if that necessary change will happen in my lifetime .... just sometimes i might be naive & hopeful.