Consumerism paves the way for social pathology

The 19th of April J.G. Ballard passed away. The author of books such as  ”cocaine nights”, “super-cannes”, “millenium people”. Some of his books also made it to the big screen (”crash” with James Spader and “empire of the sun” with a young Christian Bale).

A few excerpts from his latest book I’m currently reading, ‘Kingdom Come’, in memory of (in the words of Anthony Daniels): “a close observer of our national malaise: indiscriminate consumerism combined with a sense of entitlement, and therefore resentment”. Or as the sunday times says: ‘It’s his ability to summon a deteriorated but recognizable modern world into being that makes him among the finest dystopians at work.

Kingdom Come

“Consumerism is the one thing that gives us our sense of values. Consumerism is honest, and teaches us that everything good has a barcode. The great dream of the Enlightenment, that reason and rational self-interest would one day triumph, led directly to today’s consumerism.”

“We resort to reason when it suits us. For most people life is comfortable today, and we have spare time to be unreasonable if we choose to be. We’re like bored children. We’ve been on holiday for too long, and we’ve been given too many presents. Anyone who’s had children knows that the greatest danger is boredom. Boredom and a secret pleasure in one’s own malice. Together they can spur a remarkable ingenuity.”

“There’s one thing left that can put some energy into their lives, give them a sense of direction. (…) Madness. Elective insanity. A willed insanity, the sort that we higher primates thrive on. (…) Elective insanity is waiting inside us, ready to come out when we need it. We’re talking primate behaviour at its most extreme. Witch-hunts, auto-da-fés, heretic burnings, the hot poke shoved up the enemy’s rear, gibbets along the skyline. Willed madness can infect a housing estate or a whole nation.”

“People feel they can rely on the irrational. It offers the only guarentee of freedom from all cant and bullshit and sales commercials fed to us by politicians, bishops and academics. People are deliberately re-primitivizing themselves. They yearn for magic and unreason, which served them well in the past, and might help them again.”

“Consumerism paves the way for social pathology.  Half the goods we buy these days are not much more than adult toys. The danger is that consumerism will need something close to fascism in order to keep growing. (…) Our streets are the cable tv consumer channels. Our party insignia are the gold and platinum loyalty cards. Faintly risible? Yes, but people thought the Nazis were a bit of a joke.The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only facism can satisfy. If anyting, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness.”