I started re-reading Jean Baudrillard’ “La Société de Consommation” the other day, an essay that was written in 1970 and that contributed to Baudrillard’s fame. More than 40 years after its publication this brilliant essay remains accurate and descriptive of current Society.
I was amazed to read the prospective quality of Baudrillard, yet frightened of what can be predicted for the future of our Society. Is there a future actually ?
What Baudrillard wrote about the consumption Society
Baudrillard’s essay was written at the time when, in France, consumption was driven by the emergence of supermarkets. Carrefour started its expansion in 1959/1960 and Auchan in 1961. The first malls also emerged, that Baudrillard’s describes as temples where consumption is sanctified
Baudrillard is critical of consumers’ behaviors and the reader can quickly get the impression that he mocks a puppy-like behavior. Yet my belief is that what one could see as mockery is in fact an actual ethnographic description of our behaviors. What we observe in “developed societies” is eventually not so much different from “primitive” people’s behavior. As in any society we give objects some mystical and secret meanings. In developed societies objects are collected for the power and social meanings that we think they confer. Isn’t that mystical ? Do you, as reader of this blog, really think that collecting bags, shoes or jewels will really make you more powerful, i.e. higher in the social hierarchy of your group ?
There is no way back
The consumption society made us entered a circle from which I fear we’ll never escape, except trough death.
The objects that we can purchase (sometimes at credit) help us build our identity and build an image for the outer world. We exist through our consumption and companies sell us, at a profit, our daily dose of drug to keep existing.
It’s a win-win situation : we buy from companies a reason to exist. Who would like to stop buying and stop existing as an individual at the same time ? Unlike other cultures we have lost this group identity. We are alone, in a ocean of capitalism, fighting to exist and to prove to our pairs that we are better. Objects we buy are like talismans that we think will help us win the race.
Who is the looser of the game ?
Companies are certainly not the losers. Not yet.
On the long-run we’ll be the losers of the game. Because maintaining us in this artificial dream has a cost. The cost of the resources we’re consuming.
It’s just like being in a black hole. The black hole represents our madness. Eventually we’ll be absorbed, literally swallowed by it. We have reached a point of no-return and I’m wondering whether all this has still a sense. Unfortunately it will keep a sense until everyone decides to change his behavior, which I fear will never happen.
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