Your soul is not for sale
Robert Allen takes heart from a pop singer and explains how to
hit back against a consumerist culture gone mad
Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morrisette, without the kind of
hype that has surrounded the latest Oasis release, has managed to
sell about 15 million copies of her 1995 album of intimate,
philosophical laments, anthems and ballads.
By word of mouth alone during its first year of release
Morrisette's album was bought by seven million people who, it
seemed, identified strongly with her when she sang ``... all I
really want is some patience, a way to calm the angry voice'' and
after telling us that she wanted ``deliverance'' went on to lament
that she really wanted ``a soulmate, someone to catch this drift''
and ``a kindred''.
Her wants are simple and echo the cries of millions who feel they
cannot make sense of the modern world and those around them who
appear immune to the ills of the planet and apathetic about life
in general.
Morrisette wants ``intellectual intercourse'', ``peace'', ``common
ground'', ``a wavelength'', ``some comfort, a way to get my hands
untied'' and ``some justice''.
Perhaps without realising it she has captured the mood of an
angry planet or at least of those of the human race who are now
beginning to question their reason for existence and their role
in life.
In answering Morrisette's personal lament ``what I really want'' a
growing number of people are asking themselves if they are truly
happy in the materialist bubble they live in, whether they really
believe the ``lie'' that they live in economic prosperity, that
their lives are better because they can have anything they want.
People are asking, if this consumerist heaven is true, why is
life so hard for most people?
It is hard because people no longer share their lives in
communally-orientated neighbourhoods. Everything they do now is
ordered by the work treadmill and the consumerist culture. Some
do their best to improve the quality of our lives and to improve
the lives of those who are disempowered, disadvantaged and
dispossessed but it's not enough. Modern Ireland has become as
atomised as every other place and culture in the world, with few
exceptions.
Do we want to live with a culture where people have to fight
external forces to live, some dependent on a miserly cheque from
a recalcitrant state; where people struggle in abject poverty;
where environmental illnesses reduce entire communities to
unwilling guinea pigs in uncontrolled drug experiments; where
some people wallow in material splendour while others totter
above the abyss; where those who control the means of production
enjoy what they genuinely believe is a high standard of living to
the detriment of the rest of us; where those same people tell us
that the benefits of material society outweigh the risks?
But whose society is this? Is it a society created by the
individual needs of everyone or is it a society created by the
ruling hierarchies to allow them to control and dominate each
individual? The answer depends on your vantage point, your
politics and your honesty.
We must consider whether the answer will make life any better. It
will only do so if we take control of our lives in the only way
we can, by questioning every aspect of the production and
consumerism that dominates our lives. What we must begin to
question, if we as individuals are going to continue to allow
ourselves to be duped into consuming a vast variety of useless
and potentially harmful goods, is whether we actually need these
products.
Of course we need to buy food because food production has been
taken out of our control and only a few of us have the space and
time to grow our own. But we are not, as it may seem, helpless
victims.
What we musn't underestimate is the power in the hands of the
individual - we don't have to buy what the advertisers tell us we
need. It may seem an uphill struggle, but life without so many
modern conveniences is not really so bad. Certainly doing without
many of the products we don't need makes life easier on the
pocket and eases the burden on our health. Virtually anything
which is designed to be thrown away has to be a goldmine for the
producers and a liability for the consumers, the strain on a low
income family is magnified by the feeling of deprivation at the
convenience they claim to offer. Some may argue that we should
have the freedom to decide how to spend money, but should that
freedom include the right to pollute the earth, alter our diet to
one diluted with poison, reduce our air and water quality and
condemn many people and a vast range of species to a variety of
ill-health and extinction?
Only as individuals can each of us make that decision as we pause
for thought on our shopping trips. Because, until we do, we will
remain victims of a world that is slowly going out of control.