becoming the media's ideal of perfection, and behind all of this self-sacrifice the
media and corporations are the ones succeeding, not us. In Culture Jam, by Kale
Lasn, the founder of Adbusters magazine, he attempts to show the reader what our
mass media has been doing subliminally.
When the average American thinks of consumerism, we believe it is the promotion
of the consumer's interests. What Lasn believes is that we're being told what our
interests are and to buy into those false interests. We've become disconnected with
ourselves and our own interests to fit those that our corporations have designed for
us. He uses an example of taking your family to the forest for some alone time to
brave the elements and come closer as a family, but after only a few short hours
becoming so bored that you begin self-destructing due to lack of technology. Our
children have become so reliant on consumerism that they can't possibly enjoy any
of the senses you have to use in your most primitive state. After only a short while,
they show signs of grief and withdrawl. He writes that we should prioritize the earth
as number one, and get back to the basics of feeling that the earth is one with us. If
we have this way of thinking, we won't look at helping the environment as something
self-serving, but more like helping out a part of our family. As humans, we've learned
that buying creates happiness, or so we believe. Most of the time, we're living in a
world we've created for ourselves through the consumer process. The environment is
what we have purchased; there are no trees or fresh ponds. We become
compulsive shoppers when we're bored with our lives, and we look for outside
factors to fill those gaps.
As a country, we have the most diagnosed mental ailments in the
world, even though we're the richest also. This is due to Americans being able to.
We can