This lecture delved deeper than I had gone before into the subject of consumerism and it's faculties. What I found most interesting in this lecture was how consumerism came about- through the thinking of learned men giving advice to politicians and the elite, these learned men being Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays. Freud was a psychoanalyst who believed that human instincts must be supressed - or rather controlled - in order to sustain civilization. One way to do this was through consumerism, to provide the individual with an outlet for them indulge in their primal desires/needs, all for a price.
In this lecture it was made clear that consumerism is an ideological project that has continued to the present day, it is unclear how long the grip of consumerism on society and culture will last due to the need for a new model of organizing society and the economy.
A thought that was left at the end of the lecture was ' to what extent are our lives 'free' in a consumerist society.
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