Glossy epidemic is depleting the resources of the Earth

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It is important to understand that glamor is not a unique, distinctive phenomenon “somehow it happened by itself,” but a well-planned social weapon that works strictly in the same way as the entire pyramid of financial derivatives works. One of the striking elements of this weapon is a universal financial vacuum cleaner that works with different groups in different ways, but most effectively and efficiently in the fight against potential competitors - high-paid stars and top managers.

1. Glamor is conspicuous consumption. Its purpose is not at all to satisfy physical and spiritual needs. His goal is to make an impression on others.

2. Glamor is a conspicuous consumption that can be capitalized and sold.

3. Glamor is not a luxury in the classical sense of the word, if only because glamorous things are categorically not suitable for treasure. They have value only as a result of smart marketing. Remove ads - the price will disappear.

This is done according to a primitive, but no less effective technique - as soon as a dangerous amount of banknotes gets to the patient (for example, a young athlete signs a million dollar contract, a young actress becomes a show business star, a young politician becomes the face of the party), he is slapped approvingly shoulder and say: “You are now one of us, the mighty of this world. But in order to stay on the level, you need a house, a car, clothes, a family, corresponding to your changed status”…

As a result of the implementation of these status requirements, the patient is rapidly transforming from one who has a million to one who owes a million, and thus no longer poses a threat to the real, not invented, elite, possessing real, not invented capital.

Glamor disfigures the psychology of entrepreneurship. Almost always, my work with a client begins with a request to help reduce costs, save money. The work is non-linear, collective, heuristic, not for one day. And my old-fashioned head doesn’t fit how the hard-won result can be used to purchase a piece of silk worth 800 euros or a Swiss brand with a Chinese filling worth 8000.

Brands absorb the personality of the modern person. In essence, the process of consumption turns into an endless pursuit of brand prestige. Its symbolic nature now replaces those qualities of the product that are important in its operation, and the letters denoting a brand (brand) or symbolic image supplant the applicability of the product in everyday experience.

(American culturologist and sociologist N. Klein)

The second striking element of glamor is addiction to the media. Like any invented value, glamor is extremely sensitive to the attention from the media, or rather, to the lack of such attention. Well, control over the mass media automatically leads to control over glamor apologists.

“The natural result of“prestigious consumption”is“stable psychophysiological dependence of the consumer on a particular brand of goods presented on the market”. Thus, the most salable product on the market in a post-industrial society is not a thing, but an idea of oneself with a “plus” sign, that is, “one's own positive identity”.

(Tulchinsky Grigory Lvovich. Doctor of Philosophy, Professor

SPb State University of Culture and Arts)

But the most destructive element of glamor is its ideological component. Without going around the topic for a long time, breaks and glamor are two sides of the same coin. Glamor cuts off morality, humanism and conscience, like rudiments that prevent it from shining, and leaves cynicism and purposefulness. What kind of remorse is there for what was done - it is in fact inexpedient.

Glamor is a parody of purity. Glamor demonstrates not purity, but wealth, not the ability to clean a teapot, but the ability to buy a new teapot or buy the labor of a cleaner. Glamor imitates eternal life, killing all living things and replacing them with artificial ones.

When asked about dirty children: "Wash these or make new ones?.." - the glamor replies: "Wash is useless." Dirty children are easier to drown. Glamor is deadly and destructive, because it shoots its victims in the head, replacing the real goals of a person with virtual ones, real relationships - with imaginary image makers, real life - with a glossy fairy tale tailored according to other people's patterns.

And of course:

"Glamor is a disguise that is needed in order to raise one's social status in the eyes of others, so that they think that a person has access to an endless source of money …"

(Pelevin)

Disposable economy

Where glamor ends and economics begins from an accounting point of view, I will not answer - to be honest - and did not set such a task for myself … For myself, I defined glamor as the value created solely by the efforts of advertising and has nothing to do with the quality of the goods that it advertises … Remove ads, the cost will disappear. I already wrote about it. And the accounting department … Well, this particular watch, only another model my friend bought first in Switzerland, and then - an exact copy - in Hong Kong. The price difference is 200 times. 2 years have passed - they walk the same, consumer properties are identical.

But now it's not even about that …

Oligarch Abramovich took a purely symbolic and demonstrative ride on a "nuclear" yacht, the second time it will no longer make sense. Where is this yacht now? Only on the boards to the Parisian vagabonds left and left. It is no coincidence that battles for garbage dumps are now going on in Europe - the garbage dump is being updated. If Nietzsche spoke about desertification - woe to the one who carries his own desert in himself - now we need to talk about cleansing. The goods initially move to the landfill - from the production line and through the person. From the showcase he looks at garbage, which the consumer endlessly drives through himself: from the conveyor to the landfill. Even Pitirim Sorokin wrote in advance about such a prospect, about the civilization of a landfill.

“There are things as simple as a file and as irreplaceable as toilet paper. One glance at them is enough to understand what the thing is intended for or can be used for. Take a tour of the historical museum and walk through the hall dedicated to the culture of the Bronze Age. it is very clear: this is an ax, this is a hammer, this is a bowl, and that is an arrowhead. Instructions on 25 pages are not needed; it all starts and ends with a very clear practical purpose. Even my cat guessed what the toilet was for, and for what - the doorknob.

There are things of a different kind. Wallpaper, wood panels, silver seals, vases, pots of figs, glass elephants in sideboards.. They have almost no practical use, but their presence creates a certain aesthetic atmosphere, called in everyday life coziness. After all, it is clear that sitting on a fluffy carpet, surrounded by pillows and puffing on an elegant cherry pipe is much more pleasant than lying on the carpet and smoking Belomorkanal. The wood panels are pleasing to the eye; elephants from the sideboard can be wiped with a rag, relieving the nerves, and the ficus is also something useful there.

Where did it all come from? Well, it started back in ancient times, after especially advanced mammoth hunters realized that with the help of colored feathers, shells and the then analogs of cosmetics, you can not only determine what kind of tribe you are, but also throw show-off, demonstrating to others that the owner of a "glamorous outfit" is relieved of the need to strain for the sake of obtaining food and can pay more attention to, say, reproduction, automatically saving his chosen one from hard work too. Modern diamond bras and ties from Hong Kong perform roughly the same function - it's a matter of positioning.

BUT…

But there is such a degree of “glamorization” of consciousness, after which external attributes become more important than practical application. Crystal pendants on a chandelier become more important than the light that it produces. The Rolls-Royce's hand-sawn gold grille takes precedence over the horsepower under the hood.

It would seem - well, to hell with him! You never know people have strange hobbies in life! There are originals whose hobby, sorry, collecting rhino excrement, but despite the general humorous attitude towards them, no one even thinks of treating these people in places where the walls are soft and the shirts have long sleeves and fit comfortably on the client's back. Let them have fun!

Yes, for God's sake, let it!

But when psychosis becomes widespread, priorities within society, to put it mildly, shift. There are women who save money by denying themselves adequate nutrition in order to buy a piece of silk with a label, worth $ 800. There are men who exchange three-room apartments for one-room apartments in order to purchase an expensive sports car (this is taking into account the fact that they are not going to drive further than the ring road on it). There are mobile phones on sale, whose “filling” leaves much to be desired, but the cost of which goes beyond all reasonable limits simply because of the fashionable design of the case.

People go shopping and buy themselves shoes (great!), Toothbrushes (great!) And tennis rackets (just great!). And at the same time they spend money on coffee machines that will never make an “espresso” better than their wife, marry girls with faces flat from skin tightening, fly to Egypt for the summer, although at night they dream of fishing on a suburban pond and dress in jeans. which cost so much that from the very thought of a possible spot on the bottom, a severe melancholy happens to them. And the point here is not even whether they can or cannot afford all this. It's just that even in the most seemingly holy and personal desire to realize our desires, we, again, want not what we want, but what we need."

Everything listed in this long quote is the outward manifestation of covert control of human behavior, who has become an exemplary consumer strictly according to the recipes of the "great teacher" Fursenko.

In conclusion, I want to say that I personally am not against Swarovski. I am against the ideology of superiority at the expense of external brilliance. I believe that this ideology of the superiority of "gods over cattle" is no different from another, where belonging to the elite was measured by a compass and which has already come to the court of history once.