We live in a culture that venerates consumerism – the cult of consumption.  At the same time, if we only consumer what others provide, we up alienated and disempowered, leaving us feeling empty inside.  The consumer culture keeps us on the treadmill, working our lives away, and at the end we are left with some gadgets that end up being put in a dumpster, and second hand ideas scavenged from Hollywood movies.

This posting is about moving from being a blind consumer of good and ideas produced by others – buying whatever is advertised, to someone who makes up their own mind on what they buy, and not only that, produces their own ideas and goods and participates in the market on their own terms as an equal.  Read on to find out more.

Originally, most people were both producers and consumers.  After the industrial revolution, automation required concentrated capital and labour was required to run the new factories.  Karl Marx observed this and wrote about the conflict between those who owned the means of production, and those who worked for them.  The consumer culture was both a development from specialisation (where factory work was deskilled and people became unable to produce anything for themselves) and the need to promote the purchase of the new goods produced by the industrial revolution.

I watched a short documentary made in the early 1970s about assembly line workers in a Ford plant.  They found the work totally alienating and demotivating.  One worker aspired to a skilled job as an electrician to get away from the well paid monotony of inserting bolts into car doors.  The skilled work meant getting his hands dirty, but going home happy.

In the 1970s, we had the “do it yourself” craze, where people learned new skills and started to work around their house or on their cars, expressing the creativity that was unable to be used in most jobs.  Many jobs required more discretion and skill to drive to the workplace than to do the job.  Some people took up hobbies like macrame, and filled their houses with the macrame owls that they created.  This was the start of the push back, but the tools were not yet ready.

Technology came full circle as it increased in complexity, and the world became a more dynamic competitive environment.  Employers found that they needed more than cubicle drones to survive.  The number of cultural choices increased, and record companies found to their dismay that a new manufactured boy band was no longer a sure fire way of making millions.  TV has become fragmented with audiences dropping as the number of alternatives increases.  Google has become a multi-billion dollar company as it manages and filters the complexity of information in the world.

Whilst the System still wants to keep us as passive consumers, there are now a lot of options available to us to move beyond the outmoded idea of someone who does a specialised but low skilled job, has to purchase everything that they need from someone else using the heavily taxed income that they earn and produces none of their own goods or ideas, and will buy whatever is put in front of them.  We can either embrace this, or listen to those who want to keep us under.

Even as consumers, we can become more discerning.  We can see this with the number of ordinary people who are rejecting the instability and insecurity of Windows and purchasing Mac computers.

How can you become a producer rather than just a consumer?  Well, if you are reading this, you are using a computer, and a computer is the power tool for the mind for a producer.  The System thinks that we will use it like another TV, reading the content on MSN, or even paying “per view”, but it can be far more.  

We can write our own music, create illustrations, write books and publish them without traditional booksellers.  We can buy a desktop CNC machine and make virtually anything we desire, such as an item of jewellery, create a website and sell it all over the world.  We can buy a consumer camcorder and make a movie and have a million people watch it on YouTube.  We can design something, upload it to a website, and other people can pay to use the design.

We can now put photovoltaic panels on the roof and produce our own electricity.  We can grow heirloom seeds purchased through the Internet and say no to genetic modified foods.  We are no longer restricted in our work practices.  Employers still need skilled staff, and can take them on contract, so we can work as we require and have time off too.  The change from being a passive consumer to also producing has the potential to reconnect us with our work and lives.

The balance of power has shifted, the playing field has leveled, and now those who were relegated to consuming now have the ability to produce for themselves too.  Most people will not take advantage of the opportunities available to them, but for those who can see clearly, there is a world of opportunity to move outside of the roles we were once allocated to.

Tags: consumer, producer

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Living free. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.