The Myth of Consumer Power

or, How I Learned to Stop Selecting Properly

James Bay Culture Blog #14

(Is fourteen a Blogger's Dozen???)

I confess! I confess a terrible thing -- that I have been unmotivated to post ever since I heard the news that this very website may soon be undergoing a radical graceful change of management. The puts my whole project under the sign of the Dark Question Mark. My article about the implied critique of James Bay that virtually screams off the new metalwork statues in front of Serious Coffee? Nope -- not gonna write it. In its place I present a small essay which could easily be my last...

The Way of Extreme Capitalism has failed!!!

Shop accordingly.

That's right -- we are not just consumers. We are, first and foremost, citizens. So we must always keep this firmly in mind while we are making our shopping decisions.

Recently, my friend Derek said to me "I don't vote, but I vote with my dollars." Do you think he meant it? Do you think the most tiny and necessary form of mass political action is -- in Derek's mind -- adequately replaced by slight shifts in his buying patterns???

If so, I expect to see "Girls Gone Wild - Miami Beach" be elected as Prime Minister.

It is all well and good to be informed, more conscientious. Fine. Obviously. But we must guard against the notion that personal preferences are the primary site of ethical social action. It seems very likely that all inept Owners and Social Administrators would like to relinquish their responsibility the cells at the very end-tips of Society's tentacles.

An ignorant war? An evil product? Mass scale devastation of terrestrial life? Don't blame us -- it was the People who empowered us. THEY should have known better. Don't make the effort to change the system -- the only real change is when THEY magically all start choosing differently.

Easy to see why we would get the blame, but why do we accept this blame? Why agree to the idea that decades of mismanagement of energy technologies must be blamed on OUR wrong pleasures and needs? Well, I guess, when you think about it... there is a certain flattery in this notion.

After all -- we can't be responsible without being imagined as POWERFUL.

Think about the sheer vanity involved in the idea that our little personal decisions about what to encourage or discourage is the central key to controlling reality! Pure Narcissism & Megalomania.

European intellectuals on the leading Left often complain that no one truly believes in an alternative to liberal-capital-democracy, that we have all become content to simply tinker with the existing system rather than entertain any hope of transformation. They claim our social force has vanished, but they don't say where it has gone.

I suspect it is squandered daily in countless grocery aisles and catalogs, viewing choices, purchasing preferences, strategies for customization.

Consider Victoria's water supply.

While the end-level users, the water-receiving citizens, are busy shutting off their taps as quickly as possible & debating whether or not to water their lawns during the expected Water Shortage Period hardly a voice gets raised against the primitive and ridiculous organization of our water system. Our reservoirs and pipelines are basically a giant bucket that we hope will fill with rain each season. We sit next to the unlimited expanse of the Ocean and wring our hands about the Coming Water Crisis! All the while we can't must the time, energy, cash or belief to produce a limitless surplus of fresh water.

The truly scarce commodity is the willingness of people to demand the intelligent upgrade of the socio-technological system in which we are embedded. What do we do instead of demanding change? We are cleaning bottles for recycling, wondering where to dispose of lightbulbs most efffectively, what toys are safe, which sneaker companies support atrocity -- we leak away our social potency when we remember to shut off that leaking tap.

We are like little children playing a game of peekabo -- thinking that the world ceases to exist when we are not inspecting and affirming it.

Laughing at exploding cow (in a film) causes animal cruelty!
Viewing degrading pornography leads to more abuse.
Turning off the lights, or not, determines the Environment's future.

Deciding between the tuna sandwich and the potato soup determines whether or not countless dolphins will be uselessly clubbed to death today.

Yikes!

On all fronts -- your decisions and attention have the power to control reality so you must take every tiny decision so seriously as the primary site at which you play a moral role in the future of society.

Shop wisely, sure. And you don't have to view what you hate. But be careful you don't start thinking that every one of your precious little choices is the critical ethical bond. Efforts toward real and benevolent social change can render countless tiny practices obsolete overnight.