Always Missing Something: The Never-Enough Life

One of the more trenchant critiques of Capitalism, especially the Western, consumer-driven variety (which, I should add, is an increasingly Global phenomenon), is that in order to grow the economy there is a need on the part of the masses to consume stupendous amounts of goods and services. Commodity-driven economies of that sort have a vested interest in ensuring that people are always wanting. Desire must be chronic, perpetual, unending.

If we are satisfied--as Thoreau, put it, 'One is rich in proportion to the things that one can do without'--then we are, in a sense, not good for the Global-Commodity-Driven Economy based upon desperation, desire, and lack. The ideal subject for the Global-Commodity-Driven Economy is one who is hungry--rapacious even. One who is never satisfied and always eager for more and more is itself the 'subject' that the Global-Commodity-Driven Economy is eager to help create. Thus, there is a constant reinforcement of a sense of lack. The airwaves are full of ads telling us what we are missing. The billboards are replete with examples of how our lives are currently insufficient, because we don't yet have 'such-and-such' a product or service. So sign up! Sign up now!

But it doesn't end there. It just doesn't end. There is going to be someone else to come along and tell you what you are 'missing out on.' There is going to be someone else to come along and define a new lack for you, a novel-form of absence. So that you will live a life of not-knowing what you are missing out on until someone comes along eager to tell you who or what it is. That is, to tell you the nature of your absence and how to fill it.

'Oooohhhh... I have just the product for you. It must be your lucky day.'