All about: Consumerism

Review: Spent by Geoffrey Miller
Geoffrey Miller's 2008 book Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior about conspicuous consumption uses the relatively new science of evolutionary psychology to analyse modern humans' consumerist behavior. The bottom line is that we engage in conspicuous consumption to show potential mates, like animals, that we have desirable traits. Through countless examples, some of which are ...
Infinite loop
'cause I just bought a flat screen tv and you might ask me why I've done it when there's nothin' to watch on it but that doesn't bother me
Santa Clauses
I want to describe this Christmas market with its two santa clauses with its smell of burning sugar and nuts its pointy shoed elves, its fake snow on miniature chalets, its happy tunes its steel frames covered with fake silk flowers its plastic mistletoes in the flickering light with a language that isn't subject to ...
Lifestyle Changes
Most activists are frustrated when their opponent in a debate reduces citizen influence to consumer choices. They can't stand people who still live in their liberal fairy tale world where the consumer votes with her wallet and from the sum total of consumers, in good Rousseauian fashion, emerges the volonté generale and determines the destiny ...
Some notes on Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism
In reply to a noteworthy article in the Guardian about the book "Postcapitalism" that is published on July 30. 1 Mason interprets the transition from capitalism to postcapitalism as a parallel to the one from feudalism to capitalism. This serves to explain that such a societal transformation takes many decades and gives rise to 'a ...
Idea of Do NOT consume

I did it. I have alluded to the greatest possible crime against "the Economy". I have created a facebook page entitled "do not consume" on which I post a prohibition sign with the picture of a consumer item. It is intended to be a repetitive, mind-numbing message in exactly the same way the big ...
February 13. Damn you so much, consumerism.
There are still moments that we can have revelations. Seldom do they occur but all the more meaningful is the trace they leave behind in our minds. It is so powerful because of it makes us feel related to the very essence of being more than anything else, albeit in a negative way. The kind ...
February 6. The Virtual Foodchain of Value Creation
This is a tricky one. Have you just read the title of this post? It has been designed to captivate your attention and hence to captivate some of your time, some of your thoughts, some of your being. It has its own minute place in what it denotes: the foodchain of value creation. Now what ...
March 2. The Largest Shopping Mall.
We are off to the mall again. Now you may ask WHY? Isn't this guy supposed to do charity? Well, actually it's hard to find the Philippine consulate, and we have some writing to do, and seeing Dubai is interesting. We have some nice food at a street stand, obviously for the local working class ...