Be silent consume, die

[undergroundpanther]

Many years ago in San Francisco, I looked down at the street one day and saw a spray-paint stencil graffiti work saying: “Be silent, consume, die.”

http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=167018

[tomreedtoon]

1. Saw a Blue Man Group billboard that was similar.

You know Blue Man Group, right? What used to be a single original act has become a franchise, sold across the country like McDonald's with as little quality and taste?

When they brought a Blue Man Group franchise to do an attraction at Universal Studios Florida (NOT for the standard theme park price, kinda stupid for an act that just lip-syncs and pretend-plays music) someone "improved" a billboard for the act. Kind of like the way The Joker improved the art museum paintings.

Someone elaborately spray-painted black and white skull teeth on the Blue Man face, added swastikas, and the words "Work. Consume. Die." across the billboard.

I thought only a few people remember the Rowdy Roddy Piper movie They Live. Maybe a few more than I thought did remember.

[Captain Angry]

8. They Live.

What a great story. Wildly bad acting, but a fantastic story.

Things aren't always what they seem. Always be skeptical. Love it.

[Fridays Child]

2. Back in 1955, retail analyst, Victor Lebow, said

"Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. . . . We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate."

[Initech]

3. Tom Morello said something along the lines of

that your only real freedom in this country is to enter the workforce and consume mass quantites. We dont really have any other freedoms than that.

I dont remember the exact quote but he was dead on.

[undergroundpanther]

4. Yeah,true.

There had to be a “change in spiritual and intellectual values from an emphasis on such values as thrift, modesty, and moderation, toward a value system that encouraged spending and ostentatious display.” (p.21)

* This was seen especially from 1880 to 1930.
* Robbins further details how religious movements, which became known as “mind cure religions”, became (quoting research from William Leach) “wish-oriented, optimistic, sunny, the epitome of cheer and self-confidence, and completely lacking in anything resembling a tragic view of life.”

(Think NEW AGE,The Secret, A Course in Miracles etc.)
("God Bless us Rich People...")(blargh)

These movements held that salvation would occur in this life and not in the afterlife. Mind cure dismissed the ideas of sin and guilt. God became a divine force, a healing power. Proponents argued that Americans should banish ideas of duty and self-denial. ... These new religions made fashionable the idea that in the world of goods men and women could find paradise free from pain and suffering; they could find, as one historian of religion put it, the “good” through “goods.”

— Richard Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999),


http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Consumption/Rise.asp

[undergroundpanther]

5. Bush wants to destroy the middle east

Because they see through the trap of consumerism and do not want it. So he will destroy what they have erase thier cultres and history like any colonializing empire and ram it down thier traumatized throats a'la disaster capitalism) Oh to protect the lifestyles of the fucking rich psychopaths.

This western view of the world is not necessarily compatible with the views of other cultures and this imposition for a western view of civilization may not be accepted by everyone. Ironically then, using terms like “Enlightenment”, “freedom”, “liberty”, etc, which is common in such discourse, as Gray notes, results in conformity, almost totalitarian in nature.

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/FreeTrade/Neoliberalism.asp

And always it's free trade bullshit ,corporate and consumer...The "precious lifestyles" of the pigs feeding of the toil and lives not lived of others that can only be maintained by deception corruption and force.Some"enlightenment".

[seriousstan]

7. The middle east would ostracize, if not outright kill, you.

[JCMach1]

9. Are you kidding me? Sometimes Dubai is more American than America

At least in terms of commercial ideology...

The NEW ME is in large part very young (demographics-wise) and very consumer oriented.


If you don't believe, come I'll take you shopping. It's the national sport here.

[Night_Nurse]

6. Hook 'em young...

http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/news/brandschildren.htm

[MonkeyFunk]

10. So be loud, don't consume and ...

what. Live forever?

[Indenturedebtor]

11. HOLY SHIT they really do hate us for our "freedoms"

Or something... This mode of thought must be shut down at all costs...