01.27
One thing I have learned by being relatively observant in the strange times that we live is that deception can be a very effective tool. In the hands of the powerful, it can have lasting effects, which run deep, and wide in our culture.
In 1955 Victor LeBeau, an economic analyst, proposed this thought to the leaders of America in beginning of the Cold War.
“Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption… We need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever accelerating rate.”
The very nature of what Mr. Lebeau put forth is deceiving in perhaps the worst way. It not only seeks to fool the American people that they need, and will perpetually continue to need a great many things that they in fact do not, it also encourages an association between consumption and our spiritual beliefs by ritualization.
I don’t think it is a very hard case to prove that the powers that be, then, listened to Mr. LeBeau with attentive ears while they planed the various policies that would take root in the decades to come.
I also do not think that it would be too difficult to show how this has changed our economy from a nation of producers to a nation of consumers. Nevertheless, I feel like there are more consequences that exist, whether planned or not, that weigh heavy on us in our struggle to survive today. I shudder to think of the ways in which this idea has, over the decades, infiltrated us via our educations and the media to transform our behavior from that of industriousness to dependence.
How does all of this translate when we think of the rest of our society? How has this affected our morality and ultimately our evolution? With all of this in mind, I arrive to this question – How has this affected our creativity and subsequently the art we make?
-Stay Tuned