The secret economy

Conspicuous consumption exists and has an effect on people.  It has a big effect on people and on the world.  This is the realm of the ego, where our better judgment is tempered by the demands of the subconscious.  This is where the subconscious over-rules the rational, awake mind.  The secret economy of materialism, the hidden, largest part of the iceberg ice that lies below the surface, the elephant in the room.

Removing yourself from this secondary, secret economy is easier said than done.  This economy is a tax on all our activities – each generation provides a tabula rasa upon which advertisers – the active, knowledgeable group that is consciously manipulating these economies – inscribe the definitions of things, the base, acceptable modes of existence i.e. what material things are required if you want to be an American, what it means to be a man, a woman, a child, any actor of any sort.

This falls within the purview of the discussion recently held between Dr. Nafeez Ahmed and Chris Martenson on the latter’s Peak Prosperity podcast.  Martenson clarified a question he feels people are trying to formulate but are unable to put words to: “Our cultural narrative is broken.  How do we begin going about re-writing it and implementing a new narrative that comports with the realities? (min 23)  We need to be talking about new ways of living.  What is the thread we would need to pull to unravel the current system?

I would like to put forward the pessimistic answer – directed change is prevented because we are human.  Is political change possible?  Is it possible to create a new narrative, as Martenson mentions above?  Yes, I guess it is possible but the biggest barrier people meet on the path to achieving new ways of living is themselves.  And advertisers and politicians know this.  And advertisers and politicians make money because of this.  And therefore I would amend the affirmative answer above with a “No”, no, it is impossible to consciously affect change on our economic system.  Same goes for our political system.

One big necessity is being met all the time.  This is the primary, evolved need to simply stay alive.  Whether you are Republican or Democrat doesn’t matter as long as you are alive.  Whether you believe in God or are an atheist doesn’t matter as long as you are alive.  The primary demand of the species is not how to live but simply to live.  Behind all our actions there is the little voice that keeps saying, “Stay alive”.

Every way of living an answer to the question of ethics: how are we supposed to live?  If people feel that we need to find a new way of living whatever new way is found will simply satisfy the necessary category of “finding something novel which some people need in order to keep living”.  “Right” and “wrong” ways of living are both acceptable as long was people remain alive doing either.  The “right way of living” then in this case is any form of living that perpetuates the human creature.  This may seem redundant or obvious but is an important philosophical understanding.  This idea is put forward so well by Camus in his “The Myth of Sisyphus” – we humans, at a fundamental level, “choose” to keep on keeping on, an unspoken and unconsciously confirmed acceptance of imperative, perhaps built into us by our biology, the history of evolution which is our bodies, our selfs.  If you are alive now you are affirming life constantly by being alive.

That world of un-thought, of needs that form the second, secret economy and the world of unspoken affirmation are overlapping realms within which meaning is found.  And both of these worlds are manipulated by outside forces.