I have nothing against coffee. Or against capitalism for that matter(well most of it anyway). But I can't stand the way the two combine to represent that which is not right in our lives and times. Truth be told I like my coffee. I just don't like the way it's been commercialized into something way cooler than it really is. Coffee is coffee. When you start charging us fortunes for obscure variants of the same darn beans, you're overdoing it. These days people sell coffee as if it's part of a whole new lifestyle. Dude! What kind of loser do you think your customer is? We have better things going on in our lives than your stupid 'thiswillblowyourmind'ccinos.
I especially hate it when you go around telling me that this or that brand of coffee is a specialty that you've imported specially for me from half way around the world. Now hold on a minute. Either of two scenarios is possible here. Either you're lying, in which case eat shit and die. Or you're suggesting that you shipped something as trite as coffee over thousands of miles just to sell it to eager dimwits who'll roll their eyeballs and lap up your pseudo-special cup of capitalist coffee. In which case don't bother selling your stuff to me. I ain't buying. Literally.
And it's not just coffee. These days everyone from everywhere in the world wants to sell us everything. There are guys who want to sell us three McMeals a day. And unfortunately for a few of us, they manage to stay in business. What most of us fail to understand here is that we're being sold a lifestyle which is not only unhealthy, but also unsustainable. For all of capitalism's great boons, this is something which is simply not acceptable. You can't try to get the whole world to eat your way simply because you can sell it cheap by leveraging your huge industrial supply chains. It'll screw up the planet. If you think about it, you're suggesting that food which is consumed at Point A be produced and shipped over from Point B, on the other side of the globe, just because someone's figured out a way to do the whole thing profitably. There's something so inherently wrong about this that in the long run, it could challenge a whole lot more than just our health.
To be continued...
7 comments:
totally agree, man. Slick marketing tries and sometimes succeeds in making fools of us all
d entire funda of consumerist setup is selling things one doesnt need......and ppl like me dont fall for it are called cynics and kill-joys..
finally someone else thinks along the same lines ...
I, for one, refuse to drink a cup of coffee for 400 rupees, if coffee was making people cooler, everyone living in Chile would be way cooler.
well it seems someone had a too bitter shot of espresso... well whats the problem in selling something when people are foolish enough to buy it... :)
as far as marketing is concerned, my mind just switches off whenever an ad is thrown at me (except of course when the ad has creative value)....... kinda like filtering off unwanted useless material.
But i fail to understand why u oppose sourcing stuff from half way across the world especially when it's cheaper..... other factors remaining constant ie.
this foolishness on our part is refered to as "brand consciousness" by the elite few who tend to drag more people into their category !
I would have gone into the details in the sequel to this post, but since you've brought it up, I'd like to say that few people realize how much the food industry has become dependent on oil for its survival. At a time when oil is a scarce commodity, we're using more and more of it to manufacture fertilizers to grow food! It's amazing, the extent to which oil has taken over our lives. It's almost like you're consuming more and more oil for every morsel of food you consume. If you were to transport food over thousands of miles, what you would be doing is using even more oil per unit quantity of food. So while it's cheaper because you can do it on an industrial scale, it's nowhere near sustainable or desirable.
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