Hello fellow Dollars! I have enrolled in a class in which we think about how society has changed due to capitalism.

The idea is that many marketing techniques tend to make objects and even people a commodity worth pursuing. Eventually, it has shaped a "Society of the Spectacle" (coined by Guy Dubord), where society has 'degraded' itself into a kaleidoscope of images that we are passively taken in.

A consequence of this is that people start to lose sight on what's 'real' because we are distracted by the plethora of 'trivial' things that are deemed important due to marketing techniques and the media.

This surely will benefit me in gaining perspective by listening to what you all have to say, but all discussion and POVs are valuable here(XD even more than my classmates' due to busy schedules) so don't stop yourself from speaking out because it your 'helping' me okay?

Alright! Back on track... Anyways, I assume that you all know how powerful the media is along with technology. They construct
us an alternate reality by choosing to promote selective things about reality. (Ex. RPGs, romanticism of war, the need for fame, the celebrity that embodies fantasy and ideal)

So here are some questions for thought. These are worded in a way that doesn't demand a right answer. Feel free to speak based on experience, knowledge, moral code, and/or religious doctrine.

1) When do you think that people should value the fake over the real thing?

2) Capitalism has commoditized our world. It has even commoditized ideals and things that aren't necessarily concrete too. What moral consequences are there? Do you see our society shifting to that of a "God is dead" world where our view of mostly anything is now materialized?

3) It has been said (by Chris Hedges, "Illusion of Literacy") that our fanaticism is comparable to that of a religious entail where we form our own false reality to fulfill ourselves. What do you think are the fundamental differences of this fanaticism with material objects over religious worship and spirituality?

4) How effective do you think the media's influence has on you and to what extent?

5) Do you think that paying attention to the true reality is what gets us to call to arms (get going and do something), or do you think that the media's influence is more effective in getting us to do so?

6)Capitalism is competition. Do you think that because of this we adoptive a mentality in which we don't care how we rise to the top? To what extent to do you think this mentality applies based on your experiences and insights and gut-feeling?

7) Do you think that capitalist societies should remain this way despite this social transformation? Do you think that this is a bad thing? Or rather, do you think that the consequences are 'bad'?

8) In my class, we talked about the how thin the walls are between reality and 'reality' and how our values of importance are now warped. Clearly, values and reason are tailored to individuals and target audiences. Whether or not capitalism is to blame, do you think that it's inevitable that our values and reasoning are subject to the nurture of outside powers (ie. technology, religion, philosophy, etc.)?

I find that the media has set a certain mindset in the majorities minds. It is like how the media emphasizes the fact on "outcasts" nowadays , this is so teens can relate to it. Its kinda dumb because the image of being the "kind " one or the "cool" one is SO heavily imprinted in their mindd. To the point people create superficial impressions on others to the benefit on themselves even by trampling on someone else. The reality is then far more complex , no one cares to understand.

Social media takes it to the whole new level, nobody sees the real persons expressions on the face but merely few words on the keyboard can change a persons reputation. Human race only knows how to rely on something they can relate to because the selfish point of them is brought out hence they are easily manipulated by the "evidence" or "reality" smack on their faces. I know that the reality is very important to me , i would NOT conclude based on just what i think is reality but based on maling people show their true selves.

Reality is important if you believe in true justice

Well,coffee sure is good

>>3 Yeah i agree

>>2 So then in the face of adversity and temptation, human beings show their true selves if a reason for adopting a mask is to put up a front/display for the public eye.

You say that reality is important if you believe in true justice, however, you imply that people hiding behind their masks will be kept from realizing that true justice.

Do you think that this true justice you speak of is a mentality forged by capitalist craft? Or is it some mentality that opposes the 'true individual' (the face behind the mask)?

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Hello everyone! My name is Zeynep. I'm 16 years old. Nice to meet you ^,^

>>7
Please check the introduction thread on this page before you make posts like that, it is said to make those kind of comments there so as not to irritate others. ^^;

bamp

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1) When do you think that people should value the fake over the real thing?

If the "fake" thing has more value for the future than the "real" thing, then there's nothing wrong with giving it greater value. A (slightly stupid, though it fits in with your technology complaints) example of this could be writing vs typing. Writing on a piece of paper is "real", meanwhile what you're typing on a computer can be lost at any time and is merely virtual. However, writing on a piece of paper has much less worth; you have to type it in most cases for it to have any purpose to someone else.

2) "Capitalism" hasn't commoditized our world - technology has, and even if it was invented by the gov't rather than by a private company, it still would have happened. Advertising such products and ideals are also nothing new; just like the Bible was created to advertise the ideals of its time, there are countless things out there created to change such.

I think you're missing a lot that has to do with capitalism. Marketing and brainwashing has existed for years upon years. What capitalism does is give the every day person to have a chance at setting that new trend. "Capitalism" is the ability to be an entrepreneur. It encourages business and allows people to become rich. Greediness resulting from money and ignorance resulting from bias cause poverty - not capitalism itself. Capitalism, however, gives people a chance to join that higher class. It gets rid of the caste systems people were previously born into (with rare exceptions) and invites productivity and change. I find it ridiculous that people blame a single socioeconomic system for all their problems.

3) There's no difference. People find things that they enjoy and put their faith in. The only difference between religion and a book or videogame is that religion is centered around honestly believing in something, meanwhile you know that your modern entertainment is fiction.

4) The media has a huge influence, as it always has. The media is just more public in capitalism. Rather than being controlled by the gov't and restricted to what the gov't (or upper class) wants to say, the media has been handed off to anyone who wants to join the industry. This causes clashing opinions and in general a lot of bullshit, but it doesn't mean that media wouldn't have been just as bad without capitalism.

5) You can't assume that everyone will notice the same things. Using the media is more effective because it creates a network amongst all of its viewers and points out things that most people would not have noticed (true or not). You won't make a movement just by seeing that something is wrong and hoping everyone else does; everyone sees things differently.

6) Not at all. You can't assume everyone feels that way. Even before capitalism, some people would kill and steal to get the money and fame they wanted. Now, though, the current socioeconomic system has given people a chance to rise to the top without using illegal means. You don't have to either be born to a rich father or to cheat your way through everything to be rich later on in life, and there are countless educational and vocational resources to make money. However, just as many people are either bitter / prideful and refuse to use those resources or are ignorant of their existence.

Capitalism has made more people interested in being rich because they know it's a chance, yes. With that, plenty of people scam their way around, yes. But the ratio is most likely the same as it was before capitalism amongst the various related socioeconomic groups.

7) I don't think capitalism itself has done anything wrong. It has given people a chance to be more economically free than ever. Our society, of course, has many things wrong with it. This comes with changing technology, generations, and societal habits, however. You can't blame the entire concept of capitalism on it.

8) This depends on the person. Some people are heavily affected by outside sources and are susceptible to the media's, etc.'s influence. Others are extremely stubborn and stick to their opinions even if evidence (true or not) of another side is brought to them. Society as a whole doesn't lean one way or another.

Now that I think about it, I should probably elaborate on what capitalism is for those who are a bit confused or are only aware of the definitions their minimally paid history teachers shoved down their throat.

Capitalism is the idea of a socioeconomic system that is centered around individual rights. Instead of a religious organization or gov't interfering in the everyday activities of regular people and controlling the media, concepts, productions, etc of their country, it hands the power off to individual companies.

For example, instead of the gov't owning manufacturing plants for weapons, it hires weapon designers and employs the work of privately owned manufacturers. This keeps the money flowing through society and the international community rather than between the gov't and their people or the gov't and its neighbors exclusively.

It encourages competition in the industry, which forces the quality and prices of the products we, the people, get (and / or make) to constantly fluctuate. It's not as stable, no, but it gives us options and encourages other people to make their own versions and start their own business. It forces the change and productivity that I, personally, think is what caused the huge increase in technology in the past century or two.

This freedom causes problems, yes. However, these problems would have existed regardless and are caused more by society's response to this freedom rather than to the idea itself.

Capitalism its-self is not what's bad. The problems with capitalism occur when corporations use their wealth to corrupt the politicians and gain effectively, reverse-communism. By reverse-communism, I am referring to the political system where the corporate/economic entities control the government.


When corporations do not have to pay damages on hurting people (early 1900s), or when they use congress to pass laws that give them special privaleges. (The NFL does not pay taxes, content holders can issue DMCA takedown notices arbitrarily and without proof to stifle free speech)

So, it's not really capitalism that is bad. It is out-of-control capitalism that is.


Communism has suffered from similar problems in soviet Russia when they attempted to industrialize the economy and ended up starving people.


The problems with any economic system occur when a group gets an uneven advantage of some sort.

>>12 Technology isn't bad either. It is only bad in that it evolves faster than law, thus is easily abused to gain said unfair advantages.

>>14 Basically this.

And while I don't think technology itself is bad at all, I feel as though everything is becoming far too reliant on it. I don't have as much of a problem with the evolution versus the law as I do with is cultural influences. (See: The Modern Zombie Apocalypse thread.)

In this thread, though, I was mainly referring to the OP's concerns and just mentioning technology to bring it back around.

>>14 Capitalism basically encourages power falling into an uneven balance. There is no regulation, and given that some people are better than others at gaining power, they will continue to do so. 'True' Capitalism is really anarchy, since everyone is on their own to amass the most wealth they can possibly get. There is no limit upwards, like there is no limit downwards. 'Out-of-control Capitalism' is what Capitalism is at its core.

It's the perfect system for humans. Humans naturally want as much as they can get, so Capitalism is the natural choice. It is an embodiment of our nature.

Technology should not evolve faster than the species using it, so I don't like Capitalism. I don't have a better solution, but when a small percentage of people understand anything they use in their day-to-day lives, I think there is a problem waiting to happen.

I guess I didn't really share my opinions on this. XD It's weird answer my own questions...

1) Sometimes the fake is just as good as the reality. And it ought to be valued than dismissed entirely. Though, it makes me uncomfortable if either the fake or the real thing has taken hold of an individual to the point where the person has dismissed the values of the other entirely for some reason.

2) Moral consequences? The only problem I can see with a commoditized world is a that a person can continue to consume and consume out of envy or greed in the worse possible scenario. Another consequence can rise from this when others start to look at the 'fake' over the 'real thing' when all these possessions now define what a person is instead of the qualities and abilities that a person possesses. So yeah, we can progress into a "God is dead" world if people don't want to value both the 'fake' and the 'real thing'.

3) They are indeed the same thing. But a fascination with an object/god is centered more on what can be done with it. And from that, I think the fanaticism is expressed differently. Plus there are maybe some religions that don't encourage a fanatic mindset.

4) The media has successfully made me consume products to stimulate the economy, but I believe that their promotion of ideals and romanticism has warped my mind into practically seeking-out these things in the form of multitudes of commodities.

5) Marketing techniques love to point out what a person lacks in hopes for the person to act upon desire and seek out the item. Possibly the it all depends on how strong that desire is that get's us to move. But sometimes, in the realm of self-improvement, it is much easier to stay in one's comfort zone and just absorb the gifts and images that the TV throws at you. By living a mundane lifestyle such as this, the media fails in persuading you in its passionate images of a renewed through the screen. So in this case, the only motive that can press the person for change is the realization and ability to distinguish the reality and the 'spectacle.' Isn't that favoring over one side (fake) over the other (reality) not really beneficial?

6) Depends on how well media portrays this. Capitalism brings in a consumerist society where the media produces images of products that the masses oughta get. And if one can sell anything, whether it's fake, real, or abstract, it makes profit. Everything can get commoditized. The media tends to portray competition in reality TV shows as means of the end with no matter on how it's arrived (Ex. some movies, food channel competitions). Assuming that we have adopted this mentality, then we have certainly degraded into a society of selfishness where we always want to win.

This agrees with the notion that capitalism exists as a means of acquiring profit. Though to be honest, I'm sure some of us haven't adopted such a mental state XD

7)Although technology has played a hand into our information age, capitalism also contributed too. The marketing techniques require the use of images to anything that can be profited from. They display what we are lacking, and with so many spectacles (also thanks to technology) that people are exposed to, I can't help but feel that we are making a step towards the world that Huxley described.

Is this bad? I don't think so. I don't have a problem with this, and as long as we can still value both the 'fake' and the 'real thing' and distinguish between them, then we'll do fine.

8) I asked myself... Did media just sampled bits of reality and chose to promote the bits' importance over the other things that they didn't 'sample'? Yes. If that's the case, when did the first values even originally start? I am not sure what to blame, but as the world starts to gain order in the realm of standard codes of conduct and personal values, there is indeed something that is taking us a step back. I know that from history, we can't exactly chronicle the way this happens. However, the media is the form that drives this influence today and has gotten stronger partly because of capitalism and other factors.
With the promotion of values in such a way, we may also start lose priority on other values. So yeah, our values are influenced by nurture, but it is also biological in nature through observation that humans have indeed started out a system of values that are agreed upon before entities of nurture come and prune the ones that might've not been so necessary.

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>>17 I disagree with your opinion on media, assuming media is the word for entertainment across different mediums.

Media does not control the population, it is the complete opposite. The media succeeds based on what we want. If we didn't like violence, it wouldn't be on TV. The media does not make a person violent, the majority's inherent enjoyment of violence makes it appear in the media. This goes for most, if not all values presented in the media.

The media succeeds because people watch it. No one would continue to watch TV and become influenced by it if they didn't like it at all. Likewise, if a person was not violent, they would not become corrupted by video games, because they would not play violent video games.

You can argue there is simply too many of these bad values to avoid, however you can easily not watch TV, play video games, listen to lyrical music, etc. Many people already do this. Why would anybody watch anything they didn't like long enough to become influenced by it significantly? I feel as if I am missing something here, but from my view, it seems like the media is simply recognizing existing desires and playing on that, rather than creating values for a society. That doesn't make it right, however I do not believe the media is some giant force we have to fight against to preserve our morality. I think the real fight is against ourselves.

>>19 I also agree with that mindset, because I pointed out the "media just sampled bits of reality and chose to promote the bits' importance over the other things that they didn't 'sample'."

By that statement, I am not implying that the media is control here, but that the reality the people display is chosen by the media.

So yes, it is based on what we want, but I think it has gotten to point where media keeps on setting up these sampled desires as some storm of info, people start to lose sight on what they actually want and start to find comfort on the displays.

I know persons that have their priorities screwed where their circumstances allowed them to have the media take control for them. In a way, society can be defined this way too if you look at the cues that the media shares. It goes how far we allow the media to control us.

And as for the statement on avoiding the media, I feel that you can't. Nearly everything you see these days are plagued with the label of entertainment, and I have learned that people tend to passively absorb 'info' despite actively avoiding info.

The bottom-line is that society sets up the media on what there is to be shown, only for society or a majority/minority of people to actively choose to be controlled by the media spectacle.

Hmm, it's similar to the capitalist system if you look at it from this way--> People want products. So you have the boss man giving work to laborers to make product. And after work, the laborers go out and buy products using their paychecks while the surpluses go to the boss man. It's like that people are getting controlled by something that they wish for-- products.

I'm not angry or finding any of this bad, it's just interesting to see how society can be defined so well under these terms. I'm not saying that the media is the bad guy here, in fact, we shaped the media in this way, and this potentially resulted in a degradation of our morality.

But it ought to be considered that the media's control over us depends on how we make it to be. The 'control' aspect it has is the attraction that it presents for us to want to watch it, not on how well it can influence our actions. There are cases where it does both.

>>20 Ah, I misread your statement, sorry about that.

On Capitalism, I think it's a big tradeoff. People can complain all they want about CEO's and Wall Street sharks not going to jail for fraud (they give the police a percentage of the take instead), but they are ultimately not willing to give up the convenience of the system that relies on those people. They want the convenience of chain stores, competitive low prices, and all the other benefits from Capitalism. If they won't give up shopping at Wal-Mart, then corporations will continue to do ridiculous things, like not go to jail for anything, not pay taxes, have it illegal for them to be sued (Monsanto), etc.

I feel like people complaining about those events are the same people that want lower taxes and better schooling.

Personally, I am willing to trade my security, freedom, etc. for those benefits. It's extremely difficult otherwise and it may not even accomplish anything in the long run. I am weak in this sense.

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>>21 Hahaha, I don't think you're weak in that sense. It's just that I view people as naturally reliant on each other, so it's not something to view as a weakness. It's a gift really, but me talking more about that will be derailing this topic (lawls).

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