As Prof. Richard Pollay's decades of research into the character and social consequences of advertising has clearly shown those of us who live in consumer cultures are manipulated by advertising but are also driven to unsustainable consumption by peer pressure and by the fear of rejection and judgement by 'others'.
Who, then, are these 'others' whose judgement so many in our consumer cultures fear? Are they powerful individuals? Are they individuals at all? Are they real at all or are 'they' projections of the inner insecurities held the fearful themselves? What, then, is this phantom called culture whose power to judge can so often, and so predictably, manipulate and drive the consumer to seek fulfillment through retail therapy?
Does this phantom, this culture of consumption, have any existence beyond the insecurity of its participants? Of course not. This culture, like all cultures, is simply the product of our collective imaginings, of our collective will. The buyological-urge metaphor that Adbusters used in its Buy-Nothing Day campaign and The Living Planet Report both try, in different ways, to tear down the veil of culturally derived collective preconceptions that drive the unsustainable consumption of the limited resources on this one small planet in an impossible attempt to satiate a phantom.
Homo Shopus: The final stage in our evolution?
