The Myth of Freedom
In the previous section I proposed the somewhat controversial claim that freedom cannot adequately be described in terms of choice. I began the previous discussion by asking, “What word do economists use to describe us?” Of course, the word they use is ‘consumer.’ For economists, corporations, Wall Street insiders, and would be investors we are consumers, and our action as consumers is to consume.
Returning to a discussion of freedom however, let us, for the sake of argument, analyze the ice cream business. If someone were to ask me, “So Jason, what’s your favorite ice cream?” I would say, “chocolate ice cream.” They may ask why. Like everyone else, I browsed the selection of ice cream at my local grocery store and tried a variety of flavors. I arrived at the decision that, for me, chocolate ice cream is the best.
But, now let’s suppose my friend, like myself, is a philosopher — up to something deeper — and he asks, “Well, have you been to the ice cream convention in Vegas?” He begins to describe how all the ice cream manufactures meet in Vegas once a year to display their new creations and snoop on their competitors’ creations. After the convention they return to their respective production plants and ice cream labs and eventually their ice creams make it to the frozen food aisle of my local grocery store.
Going shopping, I notice that they have chocolate ice cream. I buy it. I try it. I like it. Then I claim, “Indeed chocolate ice cream is my favorite!” My friend being the gadfly that he is is still unsatisfied. So he asks, “Is there a flavor of ice cream that doesn’t exist, that you wish did exist?” I think for a few seconds and reply, “Yes, popcorn flavored ice cream.”
“Popcorn?”
I’ll stop my bizarre hypothetical experiment at that point. The truth is one cannot assert freedom if one has no say and no input in the availability of options. Granted there are choices of ice cream to choose from. In fact, there are probably several hundred choices to choose from, but those choices were agreed upon and offered to consumers by corporations, knowing that some will choose A rather than B, but in the end we had no control, no say in the options.
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Article comments
1 - Roger Nowosielski
Jason,
I'm going to have to read all the articles in the series. Your're a being a visionary here, "re-defining" words and their meanings. "Poet," from Greek of course," meant the maker, which is why Plato had banished him from the Republic.
Your focus on consumption and mass consumption - and turning the masses into consumers - is of course a topic that requires a great deal of attention. It's the counterpart and the negative (self?) image of the mass production process - each enabling and feeding upon the other.
I'd like to refer you to my own piece for BC, also in the Sci/Tech: To Fellow Bloggers: a Memo, where I bring up the matter peripherally. I think, however, it deserves much fuller treatment as a serious critique of the capitalist system.
Roger