Global industrial civilisation was built to cater to human needs: more comfort, more laughter, more love. But it lacked the “heart” to understand these intrinsically human, largely emotional needs. It was much easier for us to focus on creating this civilisation initially as a machine of efficiency, hoping that emotions, “humanity”, would eventually come in and fill in the gaps of this hideous technological jungle, much like plants populate a former industrial site. It is plain to see now that it didn’t quite go to plan.
The monster machine of efficiency we created became so successful, we embraced our new comforts and efficiency unconditionally, virtually abandoning our emotional needs, our inner world. We became unconscious, and unhappy, because it is this inner world which gives us our consciousness and our perspective, and true happiness is all about perspective.
We willingly became more like machines. We became pawns in someone else’s chess game. This system ended up owning us, and why wouldn’t it: it has no heart. And if it does have a heart, it is a very different type, one which we will never understand, and which will never understand us.
When consumption becomes a compulsion, the human enters their consumatronic state: a low-consciousness existence where their sense of self has been confiscated; but can be partially reclaimed through the acquisition of personalities affixed to the goods they purchase. With their own personality highly compromised and decomissioned, consumatrons desperate for a sense of self turn to prefabricated versions, conveniently provided by the necroeconomy at a price. Self-identity loses its internal referencing and is now externally and transactionally defined, available for purchase (or for a short-term lease for those without enough funds), much like a Halloween costume. It is a highly prized commodity to be earned, not owned outright.
Mature, adult consumatrons eventually enter a natural state of generalised cognitive atrophy as the necroeconomy thinks, buys, and decides for them. Although they are unable to “feel themselves” as real entities, they don’t know this. The identity they have purchased feels very real and satisfying to them, carefully incarnated into their brand of choice. Customization options are abundant, perfecting the illusion that they have evolved themselves into something truly unique and individual. At a price, of course.
Ironically, the consumatrons accept to suffer this deletion of character as a reward for their unconditional submission to the intravenous salary drip of the necroeconomy. They are volunteer zombies who have shed their freedom and identity. But although they may have lost much of their sense of self, the hyper-vivid illusion feels very real and personal to them, not to mention adjustable: it is something they can build upon through the continued purchase of accessory products and added personalities which will bring them ever so much closer to the specific stereotype they have chosen to conform to, and ever so much further away from who they really are, who they will never get to know.
Yet the more identity they lose, the more time they spend working on their identity. They become busy consumer bees working to perfect themselves, just what the Unhappiness Machine wants. It is no wonder that both selfishness and apathy have reached a peak, as the modern human is increasingly ashamed of their imperfections. Hyper-narcissism was deliberately encouraged and engineered by a psychonomy which recognized, very early on, that selfish, narcissistic and insecure consumatrons with a weak identity will buy more stuff, while at the same time become politically and socially inert. This was a double win for necrocapitalism and the cleptocratic corporatocracy.
Two factors significantly accelerated consumatronic zombification: new, frighteningly amplified mass production capabilities which homogenised society and obliterated the importance of the individual, and a marketing and advertising sector who pretended to do exactly the opposite: to worship the individual, helping us “reclaim” our individuality through fashion and other compulsions. After cleverly taking much of our identity away, they tried to sell it back to us for a fee.
The industrial revolution was an act of human and social mutilation, cutting people off from the very sensation of feeling alive. The reason why capitalism succeeded is that it offered people the consumer products they needed to temporarily regain some of the humanity the industrial revolution had robbed them of, and feel somewhat alive in their zombie state. Hopelessly addicted, they became customers for an endless range of entertainment narcotics.
The illusion of self leads into an illusion of happiness: consumatronic zombies are fundamentally unhappy because they can feel neither true sadness nor true joy, having lost the ability to access and process their feelings. This dysfunction reveals itself as a colourless, odourless unhappiness they cannot even connect to. It is in fact an emptiness, and there are products to fulfil it. This economic system does its very best to amplify this emptiness, making us feel as vacant and lifeless as possible so that we spend our whole life desperately trying to undo the damage. Like children who were given everything in life but never let out of the house on their own to explore, we become unhappy simply because we missed out on discovering ourselves. The high walls of the consumatron park protects us, more than ever, from exploring our vulnerabilities and fears, discovering the tragedy and ugliness of death which lies outside of the fake metaverse, and which is what connects us to the beauty of a real, unpolished existence.
In the consumatronic theme park everything is polished. Everything is jolly, but this is not what happiness is. Happiness cannot be manufactured. And happiness is not about joy. It is about being able to feel all your feelings when you want to and how you want to, instead of being told how to feel, when to clap, when to laugh or when to cry. By far the greatest damage which this capitalistic system inflicted on the human psyche was the loss of the ability to truly enjoy life on your own terms, and find fulfilment in the simple things without the artificial aids of the necroeconomy. “Happiness” became a dull yet expensive product which wilts quickly, like flowers on a vase shipped from an industrial greenhouse.
Our happiness comes with a finite expiration date, requiring constant resupply injections which make the Unhappiness Machine richer and richer, just as our mental health is progressively impoverished. This is what this Psychonomic system actually thrives upon, and this is why the self was stolen from us in the first place: so that we become the most empty, unfulfilled, ungrateful, and greedy versions of ourselves.
The consumatron is a thermodynamic impossibility, and a walking contradiction: it is a life form against life itself. It is an oxymoron, a biological aberration, and an ecosystem anomaly. As consumatrons we have prostituted ourselves out to capital and condemned the future of our children, just so that we can have iPhones, burgers and travel getaways shortly before everything collapses. The ecosystem is not a supermarket. You don’t get to have whatever you want, whenever you want it. Yet this civilisation has stolen from nature and bankrupted this planet, just so that its consumatronic zombies can have infinite choice and generate infinite waste. And although our bridge to the future may be fast disappearing under a flood of ignorance and Netflix sedatives, to a consumatron this is simply “life as usual”.
George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons
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George Tsakraklides 
We have been stupified (zombified). Unaware of the side effects of life as a shopping experience. Our human insecurities exploited by/for the benefit of our self appointed masters. Living in a perpetual con game of material scarcity and overshoot. Suffering a life threatening identity crisis of epic proportion. Dumbfounded by the glitz! Love Rick
A major side effect of our collective “game of thrones” is unless you are at the bottom of the pecking order is the fact you cannot escape your complicity in a very oppressive, exploitative, violent way of life. No way out of guilt. We are not neutral on a moving train. The system and our biology makes it nearly impossible to drop out without personal suffering. Hierarchy is the perfect trap for all. Love it or leave it becomes impossible dichotomy. Love Rick
Edward Bernays is responsible for the aristocracy’s mental shift in the early decades of the 20th century. His development of public relations showed the people at the top how to exploit people such that they wanted to be exploited.
This omniconsuming monster has only been around for barely a century. People had to be taught to buy things and throw them away. Bernays and others had to invent consumerism and fads to overcome ingrained thrift and economy.