Yesterday’s blog in German:
http://www.zib21.com/19438/anataj/wall-street-brennt/#comments
Posts Tagged ‘Consumerism’
Wall Street Brennt
Saturday, November 5th, 2011Only Bad Mood?
Saturday, July 30th, 2011Norway: A right wing radical puts a bomb in the government building in Oslo and then goes to an island where he kills 77 teenagers in a summer camp organized by the social-democratic party. He wanted to warn the party, which he accused of letting too many Muslims into the country.
Austria: A yearly youth study shows that more and more young people support FPÖ, the right-wing party. FPÖ directly appeals to (and then nourish) their fears. The study shows that Austrian youth is increasingly anxious. It also shows that those sympathizing FPÖ are much more scared (than those more left oriented) of the future: of inflation, terrorism and one day not receiving their pension.
USA: In current debt-ceiling debate, the Republicans are bringing the country – and the world economic system to the verge of a catastrophe. The only thing they want to achieve is – ultimate power. Even if the world crashes.
Brusselles: EU is facing a political disintegration and economic collapse. We’re facing a catastrophe, hand in hand with USA.
See any links? Well I do. For me, all of these are puzzle pieces of the same story. In September 2008, our western system known as democratic liberal capitalism proved to have failed. Under the strong lobby of those who hold the money, but not officially the power, we didn’t do what seemed impossible but was the only solution – erase and start from scratch. It wouldn’t have allowed rich to get richer, as they did since the crisis. Instead, we took the corpse, dabbed on it some make-up (couple of trillions of dollars worth of make-up) and pretended it’s going to be OK. Well, it’s not. The corpse has rottened and there’s nothing left but a huge mess and unpayable debt.
Of course people are scared. This could be the end of the world as we know it. The systems, the beliefs, the rules, the rulers, everything that should keep us in place and safe from chaos and suffering – it has all proved (continuously) to have failed. In our globalized world that means there’s nowhere to escape. We fail, you fail.
One more time, the only solution would be to start from scratch. But how do you start from scratch and change the whole paradigm? How do you explain to people who speed up when you signal you’d like to change a lane, just so that they don’t have to let you in front of them (even if it means endangering yours and their life) that the only way this poor planet and its billions of people can survive is if we LIVE solidarity, respect, altruism and modesty? There’s no space here for greed and power games.
Either we reach that or we’ll go through a catastrophe in the scale of WW III. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we’ll need to experience such a tragedy to (re-)learn real value. It’s human nature.
Yes, I’m in a bad mood today.
Democracy, Consumption & Bob the Builder
Thursday, April 7th, 2011Zagreb is not the town it was when I left 20 years ago. During the war in 90’s, the population doubled within shortest period, turning the city into a mess. And the only investments done were shopping malls and volleyball stadiums, while the old center was left to fall apart and hospitals haven’t changed since Franz Joseph (who died in 1916).
The country is suffering financial crime and corruption. Many wild things have happened on Croatia. Here the latest. Couple of years ago, one of Croatian “moguls” decided to ruin Cvjetni Trg (one of most important squares in the city), tear down old (and actually protected) houses and build a shopping mall incl. residential area (for other moguls, or their children, I’d guess) and a public garage. Everyone who knows old European cities knows that there is no space for cars so the strategy has been to remove cars outside of city centers – Zagrebian (corrupt) politicians allowed this huge garage in the center, turning pedestrian zones (while other European cities fight for more pedestrian areas) into driveways and clogging the already clogged area. Already angry citizens got even angrier and for years, hundreds of thousands of Zagrebians went out on the streets to protest and tried everything to stop this project from happening. It was yet another proof of what an illusion democracy can be. Money decides.
The mall was opened yesterday and Jutarnji List (daily newspaper) has a couple of excellent pictures on their website. Some of which were really interesting.
While intellectuals (in sandals and sweaters) are protesting and getting arrested (why are they all men?), girls with carefully straightened hair and blasé looks patiently wait at H&M. And check out the guys who actually built the whole place but are complete outsiders to what’s going on. What a nice illustration of the world we live in…
Consumerism, capitalism and global poverty
Saturday, March 26th, 2011As found in the IPK invitation:
“Has there ever been a better reason to shop?” asks an ad for the Product RED American Express card, telling members who use the card that buying “cappuccinos or cashmere” will help to fight AIDS in Africa. Cofounded in 2006 by the rock star Bono, Product RED has been a particularly successful example of a new trend in celebrity-driven international aid and development, one explicitly linked to commerce, not philanthropy.
In Brand Aid, Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte offer a deeply informed and stinging critique of “compassionate consumption.” Campaigns like Product RED and its precursors, such as Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong and the pink-ribbon project in support of breast cancer research, advance the expansion of consumption far more than they meet the needs of the people they ostensibly serve. At the same time, such campaigns sell both the suffering of Africans with AIDS (in the case of Product RED) and the power of the average consumer to ameliorate it through familiar and highly effective media representations.
Using Product RED as its focal point, this book explores how corporations like American Express, Armani, Gap, and Hallmark promote compassionate consumption to improve their ethical profile and value without significantly altering their business model, protecting themselves from the threat to their bottom lines posed by a genuinely engaged consumer activism. Coupled with the phenomenon of celebrity activism and expertise as embodied by Bono, Richey and Ponte argue that this “causumerism” represents a deeply troubling shift in relief efforts, effectively delinking the relationship between capitalist production and global poverty.
Lisa Ann Richey is professor of international development studies at Roskilde University. She is the author of Population Politics and Development: From the Policies to the Clinics.
Stefano Ponte is senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. He is the coauthor of Trading Down: Africa, Value Chains, and the Global Economy and The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade, and the Elusive Promise of Development.
New Religion
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010Funny living in a country where “good things come to those who shop” and sales start at 3AM so people spend a (winter) night in front of shops to then brutally fight each other to get a bargain on stuff they don’t actually need. Hallelujah.
Artificial Biological Clock
Sunday, November 28th, 2010I don’t know what I’ve been waiting for. I guess this one. I found it in “Why Design Now?”, National Design Triennial at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. If you are in New York, see it – you have time till Jan. 9 2011. This is not just a design exhibition, it is more about projects from various fields of design such as architecture, product design, fashion and new media trying to solve some of our most important human and environmental problems. See how creative people propose to save the world. I’m missing one main point: how about moving away from the culture of consumption (and that’s asap)? But I guess poor designers are a very wrong address for that one.
Here my favorite project: “Artificial Biological Clock” by Revital Cohen. The point is that through birth control, ideas of self-realization and career, independency, youth cult, Peter-Pan complex, hedonistic way of life, etc., we have completely lost the idea of biological clock – so why not have the artificial version (I’m sure Steve Jobs could think of a very cool gadget here. Actually, why not simply making an App out of it?). This one “reacts to information from her doctor, therapist, and bank manager via an online service. When she is physically, mentally, and financially ready to conceive the object awakes, seeking her attention.” Yes, alienation, my favorite topic. And a perfect example of critical design. Bravo, Revital.
More on Why Design Now?
More on Revital Cohen
45 Years of Chiffon
Saturday, July 31st, 2010Almost fainted in my bathroom while re-reading the June issue of British Vogue today. Those cool British fashion people had a wonderful idea of shooting a fashion editorial in Cuba ( with pictures of Che in the background of course). Because enormously expensive clothing looks soooo boring against a non-contrasting background.
On one of the pictures, a svelte blond model (looking like an alien who just landed on Cuba) is sitting in front of a shabby wooden door painted with a Cuban flag, wearing what is described as following:
“HOW BETTER TO HANDLE THE HEAT THAN CHLOÉ’S WHITE WASHED BREEZY, CHIFFON LAYERS? Pleated silk cape, £910 (€1100). Pleated silk dress, £4,510 (€5400). Both Chloé, at Chloé, Harvey Nichols, Matches and Selfridges”
Average monthly salary in Cuba is £10. This means that someone can live for 45 years from these the two pieces of white washed breezy chiffon layers. 542 people can survive for a month.
What to say about this enormous amount of stupidity, ignorance and lack of sensibility? Except “I’ll never buy that shitty magazine again”. And be proud of handling the heat in a white cotton t-shirt (€5, at H&M).
P.S. I couldn’t fall asleep last night, so instead counting sheep, I did a bit more math. 45 yearly salaries translated to UK-terms would mean taking a picture of a Cuban woman in front of the Buckingham Palace wearing 2 layers of (white washed breezy) chiffon worth £1,045,980 (€1,257,036). Have fun shopping!
Hookers-Time
Sunday, July 4th, 2010What happened? Are we all hookers now?
Last night, I went to the traditional summer party organized by Vienna’s snobbiest bar. I used to be a regular guest in that bar – Back then, when I was still a snob. And when I was still partying.
I know I sound like my grandma, but: Things were different back then.
I don’t know if that is the new fashion, if there are more prostitutes in Vienna or have women all turned into hookers? The bar to which we used to go to wearing LBDs (for the male readers: Little Black Dress) was now filled with porn stars and hookers. The dresses were tight, (too) short and see-through, the heels were all above 15cm. My (male friend) told me: “Look at them. The moment you show them your brumm-brumm (no clue why he’s speaking baby language. Maybe too much skin melted his brain) you don’t need to put in any effort anymore. And if they see the house (he has a gorgeous villa in Vienna hills) they’re done. Yours on the spot.”
Hmm. Either the times were different back then, or we were different back then. Or we were simply naïve. That’s also a possibility.
And then he went on: “Look at that blonde in the red dress at the bar. Polish call girl (I don’t know why he knows. Maybe if you have a villa and a brumm-brumm you also have an overview of the hottest call girls in town). Turn around and look at that sexy Czech group behind you. For sale.”
I don’t know. I have a feeling that prostitution is on the rise. Not necessarily the “official” prostitution but the unofficial kind. Wearing a skinny dress to be able to “give” yourself to the ones with more expensive brumm-brumms. It is the greed. It is the hunger for luxury. It is the “money as religion” thing. It is “get as much as you can while you can”. It is the whole new value system. Has it turned us into hookers?
Tajder in EMMA
Friday, May 28th, 2010I am happy to announce that my commentary about “Sex and the City 2″ is going to be published in the next issue of EMMA, the most renown feministic magazine in German speaking countries.
As announced on the Website:
“Alice Schwarzer hat für die nächste EMMA einen Kommentar zur Sache von Ana Tajder in Wien bestellt – und das Resultat begeistert uns EMMAs alle sehr.”
Reconnect
Saturday, November 26th, 2011Yesterday, Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving, when sales start in US), a woman pulled out pepper spray and injured 20 people in order to get a discounted Xbox. A man was leaving a store with his family and got shot when he didn’t want to give up his purchase. Another man was stabbed in a shopping mall.
Rihanna’s latest video, widely watched in US is banned in France. It is showing, and glorifying, a couple of drug addicts smoking crack, popping pills, drinking, having sex, tattooing each other. All to a funky beat, her happily singing “We found love in a hopeless place”. It looks like so much fun! Her “S&M” video was banned in Europe for glorifying S&M practices. A woman who has the status she could use to fight drugs and domestic violence is doing exactly the opposite. Let’s break all boundaries and just shock. I can see the creative meeting with an enthusiastic young director pitching the premise that hasn’t yet been seen and will break every rule. That’s how you get famous, isn’t it? And if you’re famous, you’re rich. You can buy a Xbox any time, don’t need to use pepper spray.
“The Muppets” just came out. A great film. How wonderful it is that they are back and entertaining kids in a human pace, without aggression, killing, fighting, chasing, explosions. Very refreshing after all latest kids’ movies, which are so packed with action and aggression that I’d leave a cinema hysterical and trembling like after 5 cups of coffee. Well, Muppets need to raise money ($10 million) to save their name and their studio. They don’t, but they get the equal – they get fame. They get streets filled with people screaming their names. So they win. Happy end. Money or fame. One of them will save your soul.
Rules (moral, religious, legislative) have disappeared. Barriers are lifted, nothing is holding us down and we are drifting in this weightless world of individual “I”s. We are completely free in our search for happiness. We can do everything and the only thing we have to do is take care of our own arse. Others don’t matter. The effects of our actions don’t matter. We are completely disconnected. And wonder why we are lonely and unhappy although there is so much around us. There is too much of everything, things, people, emotions, phases come and go, everything is here, everything is exchangeable. Why bind to something? It can always be different, better. So we need more! Of everything. Trying to cope with and find our way through this chaos we created, we are using ratio. We are analyzing, weighing, trying to understand. Trying to analyze the un-analyzable.
Just like the socio-economic system we created. Try to analyze that. Try to solve the mess. Impossible. We need to start from zero. In so many aspects of our society.
We need to reconnect.
Tags: Capitalism, Commentary, Consumerism, Crisis, System
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