Blogcoven

Sitting on a flight to London, chewing on the king prawn that came in my in-flight salad I wonder where it came from. How much shuttling up and down has this creature done before the nicely turned out steward served it up to me. I was rereading my Fight Club quotes this past evening on a study break to kep grounded, and if this is the machine then….

Wait, let me back up a bit. I was reading Fight Club because the essay I was writing was for consumer behaviour courses for my management degree, and its not pleasant. Advertising is the vilest of the marketers arts, it turns my stomach to crunch the demographics and model the sociogenic needs of ‘consumers’ – you and I. This, really is the crux of my ‘malfunction’; that the basic assumption is the truth and righteousness of cramming more barely differentiated shit into our easily confused maw.

There is atleast an honesty to extractive industries; you can see that miners are coughing their lungs up, that children are drowning in African gold-panning operations, that oil money sponsors the troops that suppress the shanty dwellers outside the compound. Its not nice, its not fair, noone is pretending it is.

But marketers get to deny everything. They get to stimulate need for over engineered useless things, fashions, over-packed, over-processed consumables and ignore the consequences. I ask the nicely turned-out steward, he says the prawns came from the depot near Heathrow, and flew to ABZ before I ate them. We have built ourselves an edifice, we civilised humans, and I wonder how solidly it stands.

Our new CEO came to speak with us today and spake fuzzy pronouncements that were nothing new to me. The energy industry is a heavy industry, there is significant lag between decision to implement and new sources on stream. Couple this with the empirical observation that improving efficiency does not reduce power demand, any reduction to watts needed to run existing kit is swiftly compensated by aquisition of more kit.

Drink the Kool-aid, shop, consume, fly and most of all do nothing. This is what we hear, this is what the classes teach, seminaries for the priests of the cult of consumerism. Look around, you see the damage people do themselves because some sociogenic need has been drilled into their skull. I drink too much, I really take too much caffiene. These are physionomic effects I’m chasing – means to lengthen my day, play in the night and still function enough to earn the wages to bankroll it all.

Because I’m in it for the experiences, and that segment profile is… you sell me… and most of all you cant be allowed to become content. Ignorance is bliss so we must ensure that you are informed o all the things to which you must aspire. Car, you have to have a high performance car with speed and agility you never see as you contribute to the rush-hour gridlock. You must have a car because the car gets the Girl.

Speaking of, as I finish this post on the return trip north to ABZ, I’m not entirely certain that the girl in the window seat isn’t Scarlett Johannsen. It looks like her and I’ve seen celebrities on this flight before. I can’t see anything that says dirt poor student or multimillionaire but then I wouldn’t recognise a Fendi bag if I saw one.

But the point is, it’s not impossible. I know she lives in London, and is willing to mix with plebs. And yet, when she’s on the clock Ms Johannsen sells an awful lot of ludicrously over-priced gauds; watches, clothes, cosmetics and jewels. These last two I could snarl at length about, but let me tack back towards my theme.

Can we do this? Gordon Brown is about to slap carbon taxes over my flights – I get one package holiday a year?! Fuck you hippy! But. Left to my own devices I would continue spewing carbon into the air jet-setting about, do I need to be restrained? But what about the giant cars we’re convinced we need? Or all the useless things that people borrow (and thus generate ‘wealth’ now, thats based on a future promise) to buy and feed the beast because they’ve been convinced they need it. I’m sorry, a long time has been spent to convince us that this is the one and true way and now you’re telling us we can’t have it?

Which makes being taught the black arts of getting in peoples heads and ‘educating’ them about products, convince them they’re not happy unless they have this and this and that and this and those and her or someone like her and this and that and more of these and… and… and… which in turn is adding to the problem and speeding the cycle which, whether true or not, is perceived by the powers-that-be to be sufficiently urgent to warrant them pulling tricks like declaring we’re going to cut Carbon emissions by 60%. Ouch, thats going to pinch like bejesus. And maybe abandoning your cars works in London, but out in the sticks, people will be screwed.

And the operative part is we’re being taught to teach you You Are Not Happy, before we go with the ‘…But If You Buy X, You Will Be’. And ideally it’ll be something that is quickly obsolete or its something people need to buy and rebuy – see cosmetics, see fashion, etc – and so we’re always unhappy – and best of all we’re going to have the rug pulled out and the supply choked off when the things that satisfy our synthetic needs are no longer available in the new Green economy…

And I’m seeing both ends of the curve – how to generate the want, the hunger at one end and at the other end the increasingly grim scramble to find the reserves to satiate Western Society.

God this is such unending bullshit, I’m going to throw the goddamn book at the lecturer when we get to the ethics lecure.

Listening to: The Sign – Ace of Base