Consumerism - My Thoughts

I really enjoyed this lecture, and it was particularly useful for me as I want my essay question to be about the First Things First manifesto and question if it's relevant in a consumerist society. Gaining some background knowledge on Bernays and Lippmann has helped me think about some of the points I want to make in the essay. 

Towards the end of the lecture Richard was talking about how consumerism tricks us into thinking we're free by allowing us the freedom to choose what we want to buy and how we want to portray ourselves etc etc, illustrating his point with this.

I suppose it's fundamentally true, but at the same time, I don't think it's important, because at least the cow in the image has spent time outside the slaughter house, whereas I would suggest that if this was to reflect a communist society, the cow would already be in the slaughter house.

That image doesn't show the whole image. The whole idea of consumerism is that we can try to choose who we want to be buy choosing what possessions we own. Choosing between left and right isn't like choosing between two pairs of shoes, or choosing between two cars etc etc, and so it can't really have any effect on where it takes us, which is why both the left and right path lead to the same place. If the options were between a Ford or a Ferrari, although the final location could be argued as the same place, the paths to get there would be different. Which is what consumerism is all about, us choosing how we want to live our lives within the context of society.