In the 21st century, goods and money should lose the symbolic role
The notion “Consumer Society” was first used by the German psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm. Usually, it reflected the social mechanisms formed in the West in the previous century, whose value system is based on mass use of material goods. These mechanisms are not due to the country’s status of being rich or not rich. For example, Armenia is a poor country, but our society, I think, is also consumer. Otherwise, whom the advertising claims are addressed – “brand clothes from Europe”, “use this device and you will lose weight”, “drink this coffee and you will become happy.” As the French researcher Jean Baudrillard wrote, this society is formed based on advertising message from mass media. This message is perceived with pleasure, and the acquirer of goods becomes a consumer of myths.
The proliferation of consumer psychology, in my opinion, is associated with false ideas about “human progress”. Allegedly, the man initially was in the caves, he was wild and every other minute he was beating his wife on the head with a baton, and then, slowly by slowly, he began to “be civilized”. In this regard, the English writer Chestertone facetiously noticed, “I am ready to admit that the cave-man may have been a brute, but there is no reason why he should have been more brutal than the brutes.” And hence, in compliance with the theory of “progress”, the man was a little less wild in the Middle Ages, and then, during the Renaissance, he again became civilized until he reached the “blessed” times of the 20th century when surrounded himself with various goods, he was able to enjoy the perfect happiness.
Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, controverting these “propagandistic” theories, wrote that they “always consider evil as a phenomenon of the past, and the good – a future phenomenon.” Accordingly, the “progress should ultimately destroy any evil in the future and bring this world to perfection.” Berdyaev says that “progressists” do not notice that both positive and negative elements are growing equally.
And indeed, I’m more inclined to think that humanity has not changed since its creation, the percentage of those who break their wives’ heads or each other meat-eaters has not been reduced over the millennia. The societies, clothes, houses and industrial tools and, in fact, also the tools to kill each other are changed, due to which, the number of death tolls in the wars from the second half of the 20th century up to today in the Middle East is comparable to the death tolls in the First and Second World Wars.
Likewise was the aspiration of a small number of people – to control the minds of the masses, and it is not yet clear which is more powerful – the community dancing under the influence of shamans’ “messages”, the Christian fanaticism in the Middle Ages, today’s Muslim extremism or today’s consumer psychology. As the Italian publicist Giulietto Chiesa, “People turned into instruments of purchase. Brains absolute majority controlled. We live for the market, when we work and when to rest. It was he who dictates our actions.”
Certainly, humankind has not yet thought of a better thing than the market relations. Life develops based on free exchange of goods and ideas. The matter here is about something else – to look at the good and the money as a private reflection of a good rather than as a Totem, idol, but as a tool to reach higher and more spiritual objectives.
Money or goods should not symbolize anything, it should not become a ground for love, respect and (which is the same) hate. When we deviate from the goods and begin dealing with people, the world will change.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
