Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? by Bauman Zygmunt;

Author:Bauman, Zygmunt;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

Rising consumption

‘The ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne’, suggested Jonathan Franzen in a commencement speech delivered on 21 May 2011 at Kenyon College, ‘is to replace a natural world that's indifferent to our wishes – a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance – with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.’ It is all about comfort and convenience, stupid – so the speech suggested: about an effortless comfort and comfortable effortlessness. About making the world obedient and pliable to our whims and fancies; about excising from the world all that might stand, obstinately and pugnaciously, between will and reality. Correction: as what we call ‘reality’ is what resists human will, it is all about putting paid to reality. Living in a world made only of one's wants and wishes; of mine and yours, of our – the buyers, consumers, users and beneficiaries of technology – wants and wishes.

One wish we all share and feel especially strongly, passionately about is the desire to love and be loved.

Franzen's speech continued:

As our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all-powerful, and doesn't throw terrible scenes when it's replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer

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