note on consumerism no.2

I define consumerism as the voluntary suspension of disbelief in the value of material goods . Suspension of disbelief is desirable when viewing a fantasy world such as a stage play or motion picture, and it is also necessary in modern shopping, and for exactly the same reason — the things on display cannot meaningfully be compared with reality.
Consumerism is itself divided into two subcategories, reactive consumerism and proactive consumerism. Reactive consumerism (hereinafter RC) awaits a public demand for a product and, no matter how absurd the demand, fills it. Proactive consumerism (hereinafter PC) uses advertising to create markets for products that have no natural market.
Before going on, I must add that PC isn't always as parasitic as it might sound on first hearing. Sometimes a perceived need is created out of nowhere, and this engineered need leads to a societal advance — a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will. For example, education is a form of PC — it appears to convey knowledge, when in fact its real purpose is to create a lifelong taste for knowledge. But to the original target audience of young people (and, sadly, to some of their parents), the "product" being offered has no obvious purpose — an acquired taste for ideas makes young people nearly uncontrollable, rebellious, doubtful of received wisdom. Only later in life does this fondness for ideas bear fruit, at a time (in the brief and brittle lifecycle of the average human brain) when it would be nearly impossible to instill the taste anew.
RC can exist in times of deficit, because it only springs to life in response to voiced demand. But PC, the practice of creating a market and then serving it, can only exist in times of surplus. In RC, advertising is an adjunct, a facilitation of the basic process of producing and distributing goods. In PC, advertising is the process — everything else depends on it.