Reflections

My mother placed me in an educational institution when I was five, and I remained in one ever since! However, much learning is available away from organised set-ups. Sharing experiences is a wonderful human activity.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Consumerism.


Blessed are consumers for they empower businessmen to possess the earth. They sustain world business and fatten the coffers of suppliers.

Thanks to our urge of being herded and to imitate others, an item well marketed will soon enroll legions to support it, sometimes even blindly. It took only banging the poor seller’s cap on the ground, after realising that he had been robbed from all the caps on his cart, to have all the hidden creatures tucked up in the trees above to bang theirs down too. They had previously lifted all the seller’s caps from his cart when the poor fellow was snoring away under the shade of the tall trees after putting a cap on his eyes to shelter from the intense sunlight.

Imitating is sometimes an irresistible force, the stimulation becomes stronger with the weaker willed. Decisions to follow become more inviting when strengthened by examples. Words move but example drags people along.

Imitating the positive is, naturally, a plus. The contrary is undesirable. Either way, consuming trends following the examples of others, is, to-day a corner stone activity. This explains why multitudes follow the pace-setters blindly, whether choosing a restaurant, a theatre, a show, music and singers, a country to visit, a club to join, a car to buy and so on.

Marketing makes its triumphant entry on stage at this point with monolgues, dialogues, and a plethora of other well crafted and attractive strategies. It uses the printed media, tv, radio, internet, telephones and other communiction facilities to drive its slogans home.

An item well marketed finds ownership everywhere anytime. It would be a belated remorse when the highly rated item fails to satisfy its new owner. That is why consumers must always be protected against deceitful strategies. Fair and honest pricing, honest packaging, product guarantees and safety standards are priorities.

When the gloss and lustre of a new item, whatever it is, wear off, the real worth becomes clearly evident. Unfortunately, it often ends up with the disillusionment of the consumer.

This applies both to goods as well as to services.

Funnily enough, people sometimes become an ambulant advertising medium, without realising it and without being paid for it. In to-day’s business and marketing world, advertising is very expensive. For instance, why should a shirt exhibit its creator’s details on a label stuck on the outside in a really unbecoming spot for everyone to see and to read. The more famous sportsmen acknowledge their sponsors' efforts in this way. They often end up looking like a commercial catalogue. But they are presumably very well paid for it. But for the rest of us we are doing the very same thing for free.

It would be a great loss when our judgmental criteria become dependent solely on following the crowd, or joining in mass hysteria. Brain evaluating faculties would be delegated to the crowd to manipulate them as it feels convenient.

One might argue that when a multitude seems to be in agreement about the choice of an item, then it must be a good choice. So many people can’t be all wrong at the same time. It becomes even god’s choice. This argument puts back the clock to the middle-ages when powers exerted so much pressure on the poor less gifted citizens. All must believe the same theories, and because they all believed them, the theories became all correct. But it is an open secret how they were all wrong.

It is important to cultivate the need to achieve an informed opinion through all possible channels, but the last word is always unquestionably ours. Deploring the rampant consumerism of contemporary society, or shunning the attachment to materialistic values or possessions is no use. Progress is unstoppable.

But I shall never relegate my power of choice.

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