How We're So Made to Spend - Consumerism and Hyper-Reality pt. 3

Theodor Adorno

Capitalism Doesn't Sell Us the Things We Really Need 

  "Because of the huge range of consumer goods available in modern capitalism, we naturally suppose that everything  we could possibly want is available-- the only problem if there is one, is that we can't afford it. But Adorno pointed out that our real wants are carefully shielded from us by capitalist industry so that we end up forgetting what it is we truly need and settle instead for desires manufactured for us by corporations without any interest in our true welfare. 

 Though we think we live in a world of plenty, what we really require to thrive, namely tenderness, understanding, calm insight, community-- all these things are painfully in short supply and utterly disconnected from the present economy.  

  When they're trying to sell us something, advertisers show us the things we really want, and then connect it to something we don't actually need. So, we can see an advert showing a group of friends walking on a beach chatting amiably, or family having a picnic laughing warmly together. These adverts show these things because they know we crave community and connection but the industrial economy prefers to keep us lonely and consuming. So at the end of the adverts we'll be urged to buy some 25 year-old whiskey or a car so powerful that no roads will ever let us legally drive at top speed(Alain de Botton- The School of Life)".