How do you cope with the state your existence?
How can I best survive in today’s society?
Not by turning to religion. To all but the intellectually infantile, religion is an infrastructure that exists primarily to support itself. Given this and the prominent role religion plays today, it is clear that retarding social change is a primary objective of organized religion. Maintain the status quo. This would be fine, but the willful ignorance, apathy, and above all the gleefully urgent consumerism of the status quo is what created my ennui.
Even to turn away from organized religion, there is nothing. Faith, god, hope, prayer, all are delusions, socially constructed, existing unsupported by clergy to keep us whistling and docile until our deaths. Upon death, my estate, that painfully inept measure of my life’s worth, will be divided among the living, who will value it for its illusion of authenticity, because we, as humans, know that nothing is permanent or meaningful. Unsurprisingly, permanence and meaning are what we devote our lives to.
If there is no god, no fate, no master plan for our existence, where can I turn? Art, at best, is a diversion. At worst, it is another indication of what type of consumer I am. Turning something unique into a tangible good with a monetary value perfectly describes the ethos of our age. What is the aggregate value of the National Parks? Which sphere of influence extends to the moon?
I despise the consumer society, but I know change will never come.
So I’ll fall in line. I want what you have, or pretend to have: happiness, contentment, confidence in your place in society. I know these things are intangible, but I’ll buy their tangible manifestations in order to pretend I have these qualities, while resenting you for doing the same. I wish someone would change the world for me.
How can I best survive in today’s society?
By expressing my station in life (as determined by myself, but primarily by others) through status symbols. Society is a fractal, and with each iteration it breaks down into cultures, subcultures, cliques and social groups. Each is a new market, full of potential for profit.
How can I best express my individuality by buying goods designed for mass consumption? Which clique best describes my personality?
How can I maintain any sort of morality while I hypocritically consume? I can’t. I do drugs in a futile attempt differentiate myself from the mainstream. Yet by using drugs, I am beating my mind into submission, making life tolerable in an intolerable society. Even worse, in our society where even something so essential to our survival as food has brand names, drug users are just another subculture, a clique, yet another market to exploit. How can I hate the consumer society, when I want to be judged on what I like (buy) rather than what I’m like, while despising those that consume differently with identical motivations?
I can’t, but I can hate myself.