How our Lifestyle Choices Shape the World
The Corporate-Controlled World
We live in a corporate world — a world shaped by market forces. The corporation is, by far, the most powerful and influential entity in modern urban society. Corporations control the production and supply of all goods and services that we, as consumers, enjoy in urban society — all the products and conveniences that make our lives comfortable, secure and enjoyable in 21st century cities. Additionally, corporations also control our governments to a large degree — the very institutions that are, in theory, supposed to represent and protect the interests of the public, in modern (supposedly) democratic societies.
There are a number of ways in which corporations exercise influence and control over governments. The most obvious way, of course, is the financial control that they exert over politicians through lobbyists, political action committees (PACs and Super PACs), fund-raising, etc. Another way is through regulatory capture — the control of the regulatory bodies and government agencies that are intended to provide oversight of corporate activities.
In this manner, politicians who are bought and paid for by corporations represent the interests of their corporate overlords before they even begin to answer to the concerns and demands of their voting constituents. Furthermore, regulatory bodies controlled by corporate interests enact regulations that favor the needs of corporations over the public interest and welfare.
Advertising is a sophisticated psychological operation
Advertising is a sophisticated psychological operation that corporations conduct on the public in order to influence, even control, their habits as consumers. The average member of the public typically tends to be a mindless consumer who is easily manipulated by advertising into unconscious consuming habits. Working a 9 to 5 job for some corporation, they typically earn a living as a corporate “wage slave,” only to spend their earnings on goods and services produced by the same corporations who pay their salaries, directed by corporate advertising — typically fast/junk food, entertainment, clothes, pharmaceuticals, etc. This broadly typifies the urban lifestyle for most of us as modern consumers.
To that extent, the average unconscious consumer is no more than a mindless drone. At some point, they are replaced in their place of work by mechanization and then disposed of by the system when their funds and ability to consume goods and services dries up. In the long term, presumably, corporations seek to achieve the complete mechanization of the entire society with the total elimination of the human component — if not its subjugation to corporate mechanistic forces. Thus, it is apparent that corporate interests aspire, in the long term, towards a society that is completely controlled and mechanized and utterly devoid of life and humanity.
This, I would suggest, is destined to be our fate if we persist in living out our inevitably brief and, ultimately, meaningless lives as mindless consumer drones on behalf of our corporate overlords.
Becoming Conscious Consumers
Another option that we have as urban consumers is to become more conscious and aware of our habits as consumers — to become conscious consumers. This means paying closer attention to how we spend our money — to what products and commodities, goods and services we purchase as consumers. It means voting with our dollars — being informed and aware of what we are purchasing and whom we are purchasing from, and spending our money accordingly. In effect, we vote for the products that we purchase and enable the corporations we purchase from to profit, thereby enriching some at the expense of others. Being a conscious consumer means exercising this vote judiciously, from a state of being informed and aware.
The conscious consumer is an informed and ethical consumer
Rather than feeding into the system and becoming a mind-slave to corporate advertising, the conscious consumer takes the time to research and investigate the corporations and products they spend their money on. It means being an informed and ethical consumer rather than a mindless drone responding unthinkingly to corporate advertising. It means avoiding products and corporations that may be involved in corrupt, shady practices — e.g. child labor, factory farms, the use of GMOs and “added refined sugar” in food products, the use of illicit chemicals, toxic spills, environmental degradation, dishonest advertising, the use of hazardous contaminants and cost-cutting measures at the expense of quality, etc. Rather, it means spending money on products and commodities that are beneficial and sustainable with respect to oneself, others, the environment and the world.
If consumers around the world did this sort of thing at scale, then, in the long term, the bad corporations will inevitably go out of business and fail, while good corporations will succeed and thrive (to put it in somewhat simplistic terms). Consumer spending habits will incentivize better corporate behaviors and, as a result, we will all enjoy a better world.
A major complicating factor in all of this, however, is the role of governments. Because of corporate financial control over politicians and the regulatory capture of administrative agencies, as described previously, governments frequently enact measures that benefit corporations at the expense of consumers, thereby overriding market forces, very often. A prime example of this is public spending, which was originally conceived of as a means to stimulate economic growth during recessionary periods. However, it has since become a means for corporations to enrich themselves through the spending practices of their government cronies. This is, especially, a feature of the banana republics of Latin America during the turn of the last century (the early 20th century).
Some classic cases of government intervention on behalf of corporations into public affairs include the passage of the Monsanto Protection Act by corporate-controlled crony politicians in 2013 and of the institution of “vaccine courts” that were designed to protect pharmaceutical corporations from litigation over vaccine injuries.
Corrupt government practices like these need to be addressed by means of legal and political channels and are beyond the scope of what conscious consumerism alone can achieve. One must, therefore, also be aware of the limits and limitations of conscious consumerism, even as one makes good use of it to shape the marketplace to the public advantage.
The individual consumer is, by themselves, but a drop in the ocean and cannot achieve very much on their own. But taken collectively, at scale, when large numbers of consumers become conscious and aware of their spending habits, the cumulative market force of the shifts in their habits as consumers can have a dramatic impact on the quality of life of most people on the planet. When all 8 billion people on earth become conscious, conscientious, informed and ethical consumers, we can, collectively, transform the world entirely. Such momentous historical events as the abolition of the slave trade and restrictions on the advertising and sale of tobacco products are some examples of the consequences of shifts in consumer habits in the past.
Expanding Consciousness
The challenge, therefore, lies in “waking people up,” as it were. It lies in more and more people becoming increasingly conscious, self-aware and well informed regarding their habits and practices as consumers. If we were all to change our habits en masse, our interests would truly be represented at the highest levels. However, this is a process that cannot and must not be coerced — it must come about as the result of humanity as a whole becoming increasingly conscious and aware regarding our true situation in the universe.
The first step towards being a conscious consumer is expanding one’s consciousness
The first step towards being a more conscious consumer is becoming more conscious — expanding one’s consciousness. A more conscious, aware and informed member of the public makes a more conscious consumer, because we are all consumers, whether conscious or unconscious. Meditative and yogic practices, qigong, relaxation exercises and techniques, sound healing, reading, self-education, earthing and “forest bathing” — these are some methods, among many others, that people can leverage as safe, healthy and holistic means to expand one’s consciousness.
Becoming more conscious enables one to be more deliberate about one’s choices as a consumer. It means becoming increasingly aware of the impact and influence that one’s choices and habits as consumers have on the marketplace and, by extension, on the world and environment.
The world we live in, as previously mentioned, is dominated and controlled by market forces, one of which is consumerism. A fundamental question one has to ponder, therefore, is: “Am I the consumer or am I the product?” Are we consumers or commodities? This factor is determined by how conscious we are. A conscious individual is, invariably, a consumer, whereas an unconscious being is, inevitably, a commodity — they become commodified and exploited, as they are at the mercy of market forces.
To be more conscious is to increase one’s autonomy and freedom. The unconscious being is enslaved by the forces, influences, agendas and interests that manipulate and control their life. The conscious individual is able to become aware of the agencies of manipulation and control and to exercise their own free will in such a way as to ensure their own autonomy and best interests.
There are degrees of consciousness that become evident as one considers the differences between minerals and inanimate objects, vegetation and plants, animals and, ultimately, sentient, thinking beings (like humans). One is clearly ascending some sort of ladder of consciousness. A machine — a robot or AI — could never be conscious in the same way that human beings, or even animals or plants, can be, in my estimation. Computers and AI may mimic conscious interactions by means of sophisticated programming and algorithms, such as “machine learning,” but they are, ultimately, incapable of sentience or feeling and of self-determination and free will in the way that truly sentient beings are.
Mystics in eastern traditions posit that consciousness is a Divine energetic field that all beings participate in — that we are only conscious insofar as we are participants in this unified energetic field of universal consciousness. They suggest that an ultimate appreciation of one’s participation in the unified field, arising out of a state of being that transcends the limitations of one’s personal ego and the illusion of separation that ego creates, results in what is often known as Unity Consciousness — a state of being at one with the universe and with Universal Consciousness.
Being a conscious consumer, therefore, is, ultimately, an inevitable consequence and by-product of being a more conscious individual. It arises out of the trajectory of one’s personal spiritual growth and the expansion of one’s consciousness. It stems from our personal journeys of transformation and from one’s transcendence of personal ego and experience of separation and duality.
The world we experience is a projection of our own natures and selves, partially expressed through our energies and practices as consumers. We can only change the world, ultimately, by changing ourselves — by our own spiritual growth towards greater consciousness and higher awareness, by our own transcendence of personal ego and petty selfish interests.
We get the world and government that we deserve, ultimately, as a human collective. Only by working on ourselves through practices of self-improvement and personal transformation can we truly make a lasting impact on the world we inhabit as conscious, spiritual beings participating in the economic system that owns and operates this world.
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