A simple and honest life is beneficial to everyone, both physically and mentally.

? - Einstein

Arguably the most basic and important fact about consumer behavior is that we are what we have.

? ——Russell Belk, consumer researcher and psychologist at York University in Canada

Consumerism means treating consumption as an end in itself and consuming for the sake of consumption. Emerging historian, Yuval Harari (1976~) wrote in his book "A Brief History of Humanity": "The virtue of consumerism is to consume more products and services, encouraging everyone to treat themselves well, Pamper yourself, even if you slowly go to a dead end due to excessive consumption, you will not hesitate." Regarding consumption in modern society, British sociology professor Zygmunt Bauman (1925~2017). In his book "The Utopia of Nostalgia" he wrote:

From cradle to grave, we have been trained to treat the store as a drugstore, filled with healing at least The medicine that relieves all the sickness and suffering in our lives. Stores and going to stores then take on a truly eschatological character, as the American sociologist George Reitzer (1940~) famously said, “The supermarket is our temple.” I would also add that the shopping list is therefore our daily prayer book and a visit to the shopping mall is our pilgrimage. Buying on impulse, discarding items that have been purchased but no longer attractive, and replacing them with something more attractive, are among our most passionate emotions. The richness that consumers enjoy means the richness of life. I shop, therefore I exist. Shopping, or for the sake of shopping, is everything.

For the defective consumer, the contemporary poor, not shopping is a sign that they are living a miserable life of unfinished and unfulfilled life, a mark of their own insignificance and uselessness. Not shopping not only indicates a lack of happiness, but also a lack of human dignity and a lack of meaning in life. Even, they will not be treated as human beings. They have no reason to be proud and self-respecting, nor any reason to be respected by others around them.

Consumerist culture is to enable consumers to adapt to a life in which people's real needs are not satisfied for a long time, but through the trick of false satisfaction of false needs, To maintain the long-term unsatisfied situation of real needs and enable people to tolerate the long-term unsatisfied situation of their real needs.

In modern economic society, economic growth has become the highest goal, GDP has become the only standard, and production and consumption have become the entire meaning of human existence. In order to stimulate production and consumption, human beings do everything possible and exhaust their efforts - rapidly updating products, manufacturing various luxury goods, shopping festivals, discount promotions, installment payments, etc.

Installment payment is actually a unique hidden weapon that kills the middle class. It easily changes the price rules, allows unearned income to participate in the price mechanism of the market economy, and raises the supply and demand curves. , the result is to raise the price of goods.

The French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929~2007) profoundly and systematically analyzed how consumerism plays a role in today's human life in his book "Consumer Society" Gained a dominant position and became a dominant force.

Baudrillard believes that in the consumption structure of contemporary capitalist society, what we consume is not the use value of commodities, but the symbolic meaning of commodities (style, taste, class, status, etc.). The illusion of symbolic value. "Today's consumption is no longer the real consumption of people, but the consumption of the meaning system. We show our taste through consumption, and mark the class to which we belong through the symbols we consume. The purpose of consumption is no longer survival, but Desire. ”

And, since “the consumption system is not based on the urgent need for needs and enjoyment, but on the encoding of certain symbols and distinctions,” this kind of consumption is fundamentally. It cannot bring real satisfaction. On the contrary, it will lead to people's desires being insatiable. This kind of consumption is actually a curse on mankind, just like the curse on the greedy crew of the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean: "The more gold coins we spend, the more we discover: No matter how much wine we drink, we are not satisfied, and food is not enough." When we eat it, it turns into sand, and beautiful women cannot satisfy our desires. We are driven by greed, and now we are swallowed up by greed."

People have lost themselves in endless consumption. , freedom and autonomy. "Recognizing the freedom and autonomy of consumers is just a scam." Baudrillard believes that the seemingly autonomous consumer subject does not exist, it is an illusory subject created by advertising. Baudrillard wrote:

Today, the things produced do not exist according to their use value or their possible use time, but on the contrary - they exist according to their death, and the acceleration of death is inevitable causing price increases to accelerate. This alone is enough to cast doubt on the entire "rational" indictment of economics regarding uses, needs, etc. However, people know that the order of production exists at the expense of this extinction of all commodities, a permanent prearranged "suicide".

This activity is based on the "disruption" of technology or its deliberate obsolescence in the guise of fashion. Advertising spends huge sums of money to achieve this miracle, and its only purpose is not to increase but to remove the use value of the commodity, to remove its time value, to subject it to the value of fashion and to hasten renewal.

Consumerism has also caused human alienation. Baudrillard wrote: "The entire society, the 'share' society, the limited society signed a contract with the devil, selling him all transcendence and all rationality. Purpose in exchange for abundance, and thereafter plagued by the absence of purpose... Alienation cannot be transcended: it is the very structure of the deal with the devil, it is the very structure of commodity society."

Baudrillard. It is argued that in the capitalist production order, it is not we who control time and money. On the contrary, we are manipulated by time and money as exchange values, and we become the dung of time and money. We can no longer kill time freely and without calculation as we did in ancient times, because today we believe that time is money, money is everything, and time and money can no longer be regarded as dirt.

Today, in the vast sea of ??desire, all human energy is spent on getting others to consume more. Unfortunately and ironically, this "others" also includes themselves! Today, consumerism is everywhere and pervasive, from clothing (famous brands), food (exotic smells), housing (villas), travel (luxury cars), play (luxury yachts), to the body (all kinds of cosmetics, beauty, plastic surgery), to all kinds of A kind of spiritual opium (video games, soap operas, short videos, live broadcasts, talent shows, reality shows, entertainment gossip, vulgar novels), consumption far exceeds the jurisdiction of God’s most glorious moments!

Consumerism encourages people to produce all products they can, and various products are rapidly updated to stimulate the public's desires to the greatest extent. If Apple releases a new model of mobile phones every three to five years, many people's workload can be reduced by half, many consumers can use their credit cards less frequently, and even some people's kidneys can be saved; if Huawei releases a new model every year The number of mobile phone models has been reduced from 28 (in 2018) to 3. Working overtime until 11 o'clock every day, taking one day off every week, voluntarily giving up annual leave, and continuous death from overwork will become a magical fantasy.

Consumerism has turned the entire human race into a burning sun. One day, the human world will burn out. The acceleration of production not only depletes the resources on the earth, creates immeasurable garbage, destroys the environment on which human beings live, but also erodes people's behavior, will, spirit and thoughts.

(The cradle my mother slept in, my sister-in-law, the 5 to 6 children in the village, passed by the eldest sister, the second sister, me, the eldest sister’s 3 children, now it’s the second sister’s child’s turn, and from now on I will (Child of: Zhu Zongguang)

Why can’t we let ourselves be free and have more leisure time, look at the clouds, the sky, the water, the mountains, read books, watch plays, watch clowns come on stage, and read history? Rotational transition? Why can't we defeat the logic of capital (profit maximization), give up the obsession with economic growth, and return the earth with green water and green mountains, the sea with clear blue, the sky with white clouds, and humanity with tranquility and warmth? Why can't we be free people, not slaves to material things, with a free and agile spirit, rich in thought, love and creativity?