How We're So Made to Spend - Consumerism and Hyper-Reality pt. 1

The term “hyperreality” was coined by Jean Baudrillard in the ‘80s, to describe that which a person might perceive as real when what he is actually experiencing is a copy, a simulation of reality. Hyperreality manifests widely in our time. One instance is the great amounts of commercials that present a recreation of reality where everything is perfect. We enter the hyper-real world when we copy the fashion style of celebrities imagining the superficial rise of status as we wear the same clothes as those whom we aspire to be. We purchase and consume the advertised products not for what they are materially, but for what they represent. 

The price of hyperreality is well displayed by the consumerist culture in supermarkets. In supermarkets, the product lines are filled with dazzling display of material items for purchase. It is where we go to spend more time entranced by the superfluous array of things we don't need, but nonetheless in our reach for purchase. The superfluousness, the quality of the rich and wealthy, is what we psychologically crave. For the time we spend shopping, we are surrounded by the wealth that is there with us, and when we check out we wake up to reality dejected and filled with futility. We then return after a short while, for the high supermarkets provide. 

Indeed, consumerism is the opium of the people.