Economy of Desire

The most recent issue of Adbusters, posits that we have finally managed to destroy the world, both economically, socially and structually due to our unsustainable lifestyle. In “We’re Back” we look at us as it was and see it as it is.

Here is the most thought provoking article I have read anywhere for a long long time. I typed it out. But I suggest you run to the new stand or the library and read this copy, it’s really good. This issue tells it all with a brand new spin.

I Love You
By

Timothy Querengesser.

The Guess Jeans Billboard near my apartment, the one that made me gag in the morning on my way to work, has now become a site for sexual catharsis. It’s toppled, smashed and ripped apart. Both of Paris Hilton’s suggestive eyes have big $$’s etched into them. And sprayed painted across her tanned forehead" "You fucked the system!"

The rage toward this lingering effigy of our fallen economy isn’t directed at Paris, or even at Guess. More like the years of needless sexual desire suddenly findihg a violent release.

Those sultry body parts of celebrities that became more familar than your own? Remember your imaginary body? Breasts by Paris Hilton, abs by USher, fat wallet and fat lifestyle by Donald Trump. Sex was the magic manna energizing it all…..

….You need to ponder what we rarely questioned before the crash; what does it mean to construct an entrie system of exchange on sex?

After the supply and demand were jettisoned as our economic axis, irrational desire fuelled by personal inadequacies and sold at Wal-Mart prices took over. This arousal machine sent out constant sexual shocks to keep us spending. Reduced to responding to sexual stimulation, corporations and consumers became pimps and johns.

It wasn’t in stores the sex sold, it was in the mind. The purchase was the final moment of an intricate come-on. The product hardly mattered. If Brand X’s toothpaste made teeth whiter, but Brand Y had sex appeal, we bought Brand Y like horny sheep. Sexy Ads replaced our natural understanding of love and beauty with unobtainable ideals that fed on our esteem. Sullen and depressed, we bought to feel the excitement and lust of the flesh surrounding us.

Whem Maslow put the physiological requirements of food, water, and sex at the base of his hieracrchy of needs, he meant physical sex. But the physical isn’t on offer in the virtual economy. It was all tease and no penetration. Marketers piqued base sexual appetites, yet never fed them.

Still, numbed by television, repetitive jobs, and easy thoughtless lives, sexual fantasy offered wild escape. We allowed ourselves to be swallowed whole into the cultural spectacle, and the further we slipped into the virtual, the less physical sex we had.

The crash was both pyschological and structural. Our ordering of desires over needs was sent into painful reversal. So many insulated lives full of needless desire were abruptly exposed to a wilderness of real needs -for food, water and shelter. In an instant: sexual fantasy was destroyed. Countless industries built upon the shrine of flesh, from cars to fashion, music and entertainment, structure buckled. We prayed our economic house could weather the shocks, but ultimately, the veil was off. A fantasy economy based on desire was meaningless when desire itself was an impossible fantasy.

And so revolted against the old signs of the system, the steamy looks and outed lips and buxom breasts of life in a secure little bubble. Paris Hilton represents everything that was wrong with the old economy, where few of us could accept that the sexy carrot at the end of the stick was not meant to be eaten. As George Gilder said, "Real poverty is less a state of income than a state of mind." We destroyed the Earth, and our souls, in the process. That’s what economics built on sex finally meant.