The incredible rise in resource usage on a global scale immediately following the end of World War 2:



A Dilemma:

The Earth is a Machine ? go ahead and use if up as quickly as possible because we believe

that standards of living will get better and increasingly improve people's lives. Maybe or maybe not.

What we do know is that we are using up resources as fast as possible. Why?



Increased prosperity is the American dream of the 1950s?



Only if we have large demands can we expect large production. Therefore, it is important that in planning for the postwar period, we give adequate consideration to the need for ever-increasing consumption on the part of our people as one of the prime requisites for prosperity.
(Robert Nathan 1944 - an economic advisor to the White House).

Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals , that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status , of social acceptance, of prestige , is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives is today expressed in consumptive terms

(Victor Lebow 1955 - The Journal of Retailing)

Some new words

• Consumerism
• Franchise
• Planned Obsolescence

This leads directly to the Throw-away Society



How does pressure to conform affect the American dream?
How does advertising promote certain lifestyles and ideals?

Who might be excluded from the new prosperity?



Wholesale Brainwashing of the American Consumer:



The mainspring of the American standard of living is High and Increasing Productivity!

We take abundance for granted as we consume more than half of the world's coffee and rubber, almost half of the steel, a quarter of the coal and nearly two-thirds of the crude oil ( At this time the US had only 1/15th the population of the world ).

The 1946 Employment Act named "purchasing power" as one of the things government was meant to promote. Along the way the Ad Council cheered them on, casting consumption as what distinguished happy capitalists from those poor beleagured souls living under the communist boot.







TV commercials as the brainwashing mechanism

Visual themes:

• consumption/buying = freedom
• freedom makes people happy
• Men wear hats and smoke pipes
• Women wear skirts/dresses and are always happy
• Kids are spoiled because they get stuff and this is the American Way
  
  America in the 1950s: The Decade that Changed Everything: The Atomic Age; Prosperity for All; Interstates; Suburbia; Television; Rock N Roll; The Age of Advertising; The Happy Homemaker and the Origin of Sexism; The Origin of the Perceived American family unit - two happy white kids ...
  
  
  
  Example subversive commercials:
  
  
  • Freedom and convenience make people happy
  • Tooth Decay = communism
  
  
  
  
  
  Slogans R US and We can Sell anything just by making up words and creating Leisure Time. Leisure time is used for travelling and vacations.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Ler's not forget the happy homemaker ...
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  What is the new word here?
  
  
  
  The Progamming Of Society which Determines our Values
  
  This iS Fuckin' NUTS!!!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And Yes of Course, Public Health
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The 1950s Wholesale Conversion to Suburbia and Conformity
  
  What happened to Rugged Individualism?
  
  We are cellular automata moving in a programmed world
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  You are Currently Living in the Most Unsustainable Period in History Is this our value system? GDP is our GOD.
  
  
  
  Remember, its all about getting products to market as fast as possible. The vehicle for this are supercontainer ships and supercontainer ports.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The embodied energy (largely fossil fuels) to run this global enterprise has taken Earth systems out of equilibrium and moved heat in to places where it is not supposed to be. This leads to the inveitable era of climate change.