People like to talk about all kinds of “isms” – conservatism, liberalism, capitalism, communism, multiculturalism, Islamism, globalism, etc.
In reality, there is only one ism that is relevant to our age: consumerism.
Both as an ideology and as an applied science, consumerism is the idea that human beings exist to produce and consume products in an endless cycle of pleasure-pain exchange. It is a complete image of man’s purpose in the universe, and it works on all people.
For all of mankind’s existence in the universe, we viewed ourselves mainly as divine beings, with a relationship to God, with the purpose of our existence consisting of two things:
Relationships with other human beings: family, friends, spouses, children. There was some pursuit of art and of entertainment, as well as some pursuits of spiritual enlightenment, but all of that revolved around strengthening human relationships. Overcoming adversity: a man needs challenges in order to be fulfilled.
Before the dawn of the industrial age, 99% of men had a job either:
Hunting or Farming
And women’s only job was cooking, keeping house and raising children.
Most generations also fought a war, as this kind of violence is hardwired into men. It’s an evolutionary instinct to ensure the survival of the fittest in a universe of limited resources.
Our goals were not to collect and consume trivial plastic objects, clothing, electronics, entertainment media, vacations, dining experiences, etc., because these things did not exist, and no one could imagine them existing. It’s a New Era
Industrial society made consumerism possible, because it made unlimited resource production possible.
After WWII, we had a situation where those in power had seen the ability of people to use industrial machinery to produce goods on a scale wildly beyond anything in all of history. And so when the war ended, the concept of advertisement – which had come out of the field of psychology, through Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays – was deployed against the population on a mass scale.
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