Consumed

Possibly the most unthinkable story of the last million years is the rise of the modern human culture. The cities we populate and the lives that we lead. It is the environment that our children will inherit. But after a century of exponential growth in population and consumerism people are questioning the nature of modern life. We’re beginning to doubt our motivations and we’re predicting environmental destruction. In understanding human nature our current concerns look smaller, more transient, with, potentially, a solution. We’ve all got this weird mental illness called consumerism. We’ve all kind of gone collectively psychotic. Chasing status, in public, with people who don’t really care and neglecting your own lovers and friends and neighbours and kids. The consumption of material items as a means to acquire status is as much of a trap as it is a set of freedoms. The pervasive nature of it has perhaps crossed the threshold of us being able to cope with it and process the information. The high street is actually a stressful, anxious place. We’re getting very little from it, but working incredibly hard to try and figure it all out. We have the delusion that we really have deep insight into ourselves already. We’re very sophisticated now in the early 21st century, but we’re going to seem incredibly naïve in another hundred years.