consumeref

Reflection: From an early age we are trained not to be without want. This is accomplished not only through the omnipresence of advertisements, but our culture seems to be drenched in the message that to live is to consume relentlessly and without thanks. Our materiality clouds not only our capacity for change but our perceptions of self, which are obscured too easily by Hollywood and the beauty industry. Again Alexis de Tocqueville points out that we have squandered even our most basic freedoms in exchange for the freedom to choose what we will consume, and that is an absurdly mundane thing with which to replace our civil liberties.