The Evils of Modern Consumerism and You

A venomous trap set up for you at birth, consumerism will consume YOU if you don't cut off its ugly head and choose a different path. In this week's episode, we deconstruct the evils of modern consumerism, where it started, how we got here, and what you can do about it. Come with me and see just how far the rabbit hole goes...

 

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welcome to red pill revolution  my name is Austin adams red pill revolution started out with me realizing everything that i knew everything that i believed everything i interpret about my life is through the lens of the information i was spoon-fed as a child religion politics history conspiracies Hollywood medicine money food all of it everything we know was tactfully written to influence your decisions and your view on reality by those in power now im on a mission a mission to retrain and reeducate myself to find the true reality of what is behind that curtain and im taking your ass with me welcome to the revolution hello and welcome to the third episode of red pill revolution    my name is Austin adams and im really excited to talk about this topic today its one that i think ive personally struggled with ive seen family struggle with it ive seen friends struggle with it and i think as a nation were struggling with it and i really dont think its something that we are even ready to address you know at least on a national scale   but its something that i think weve been so far programmed so deeply programmed that we dont even know that its there and its in our decision making it affects our relationships it consumes us with anxiety and it really gives us a false sense of purpose for life and that topic is the never ending the never ending search for happiness through consumerism and this topic is a really interesting one because i think its one thats rooted in history but rooted in history but so venomously affecting modern society and i don't even think very many people know the history of it and its not one that im too far familiar with myself but i know a little bit about it than enough to speak on it to give you guys an idea but before we do that i need you to do this one little thing for me i need you to like and subscribe to this channel and you just share this to whoever you know and i need you to go to i choose dot red dot com is for losers i choose dot red and sign up for my newsletter im going to be keeping you guys updated im going to be pushing out all of the articles that i reference there im going to be putting out a weekly newsletter about the topics that we discuss and it will keep you updated moving forward i appreciate you guys so much like subscribe share lets start this revolution together so i think the easiest way to look at modern consumerism is the turn of the th century right so its like the very beginning of the industrial revolution its the turn of you know world war one its the same time as you know similar timing    later on as    the great depression and then world war two and then   and then again the world war ii thing is such a theme in our society and the shifts that were made in our culture and our government and our politics and our societal belief systems and this is just one of them   but throughout that turn youll see that with that industrial revolution that we started to produce a lot more products than we had people who wanted them and so youll see that the also modern advertising came around at the same time to push this ideology that you know ever heard of the term keeping up with the joneses it just means you want to have what other people have and its a constant never ending search to you know if youre lower    you know a lesser income individual to be searching for middle class and if youre middle class to be searching for upper class and if youre upper class to be searching for wealth and to be constantly looking at that person who has a little bit more than you a little bit nicer car a one year newer iphone    you know the nicer baby stroller    you know if youre me a nicer rifle whatever that thing is for you   you always want the next best thing and im so guilty of this and then you can justify it through the justifications weve been given that you know the products better made and you know theres one term that youll see throughout you know what really affected modern consumerism is planned obsolete implant obsolete is an idea from companies that they basically you know and youre probably familiar with the idea but not familiar with the term and the idea that you can use a modern example of would be iPhones right you dont need to replace your iphone every year but for some reason a ton of people do it whether its for the new color whether its for two better megapixels on the camera theres a reason theres there theres a justifiable idea that we have for getting that phone but theres really no reason for it right the phone that you work works perfectly fine right but you want that next best thing constantly and thats a programming that we were given thats not our fault right from the time that we were little you know we were watching tv shows with commercials telling us what toys to buy and what cereal to eat and we were you know at school looking at the kids shoes and wanting the new nikes and you know its something so far ingrained in our culture and so deeply programmed into us that to try to fix this takes a massive effort because its not only seeped its way into our idea of social status but its seeped its way into our ideas of success right and success now is completely defined by the amount of money you make it used to be that somebody who was in politics and made a you know not a very good amount of money or somebody who is a police officer or somebody who is a firefighter or somebody who was a lawyer or   you know took a political position out of wanting to help the people or you know was a school teacher were much more highly thought of than they are today and the reason for that is because we value money and income more than anything else right and youll hear this phrase its not what how much you make its how you made it and i think that really holds true because that you know i im somebody who i come from a background in insurance sales and i had a you know a team of insurance agents and i would teach them how to sell and make great money doing it but i found very little fulfillment in it because i think in order to be successful in any business like that you have to do it under the context of    you have to play the game you have to not only understand that your idea of success is monetary but you also have to preach that to other people so that thats what they want success to look like too and when i would bring people in you know you would you know if youd have the nice watch youd have the nice car youd have the brand new you know shoes and    magnanis and rolexes and Mercedes and it was all to put on this show to make that person who is in a position where they wanted a job to want to be like you right and they didnt know anything about my family at this time they didnt know anything about my personality they didnt know anything about my intelligence my ability to mentor them my ability to train them or my moral compass or they knew nothing of that but we were taught to put on this show that this is what you want to be like and by doing that we incentivized people to work longer shifts than they normally would have we incentivized them to work longer to make more calls than they normally would have and the idea was that they wanted to make the money like i made it and my idea was that i wanted to make the money like my manager made it and that managers idea was that they wanted to make money like the regions made it and the regions idea was they wanted to make money like the owners and ceos made it and its this constant neverending want and that want leaves you empty theres no good that comes from seeking money because you know money itself is such a fictitious idea the idea of money you know its not even that we value money its that we value success and success todays successes is constant never-ending stream of new things right and i think we have to define like in order to be happy in todays modern world you have to sit down and have a very real conversation of your with yourself its like what does success mean to me and ive recently battled with this and just getting out of that insurance industry that was very somewhat toxic for my mentality on success and happiness i always thought success meant getting to a certain place in life and having a certain amount of money in the bank and having a certain watch and having a certain car and having certain vacations and a certain look on instagram and its something that i made a lot of money and it was it was empty to have pursued such an empty goal for so long was a difficult thing to wrestle with and so i redefined happiness for myself and i took some time off and luckily i had the financial ability to do so and i tried to find what would make me happy like what would make me feel fulfilled and what would i do on a daytoday basis if money didnt matter to me that ended up being spending time with my kids that ended up being you know going and doing the things that i love like jiu jitsu and    and also you know making a difference through speaking how i feel right and that was something that i enjoyed a part of the business that i was in before was bringing in people and mentoring them and telling them about the industry and teaching them about sales and teaching them how to become successful something that i am reprogram preprogramming myself to value is the idea of spreading moral success and spreading moral mentorship and personally unraveling the knot of my life by finding out more about history and so what i decided to do was to figure out what i was good at i sat down and wrote down some of the qualities that i possessed some of the things that i was given naturally and some of those things were you know being able to speak well and being able to present an idea very clearly to people and not being afraid of audiences and also impacting people through research and so you know i decided to go back to school utilizing my gi bill to go to    go back to college after i was an air traffic controller in the military and    now i decided after getting out going to being in the insurance business for six years five years or so im going back to school to go to law school and    philosophy is something im passionate about and so im pursuing that and at the same time im figuring out more about myself im figuring out more about    what it means to be happy in todays world and im and im doing that at the same time of letting go of that idea of that success being completely tied to finances and   this is something that i was ingrained with throughout i think in my childhood that success always meant money because there wasnt a lot of it you know an overwhelming a lot of it in my childhood and i saw you know the difficulties that my parents struggled with and so its not like money is the root of all evil its like you know you have to have a certain level of it you have to have a certain income level to provide for your family in the modern society and obviously that takes hard work and consistency and goaldriven action on a daytoday basis and thats you know theres nothing wrong with that and you have to have a certain level of that because if you dont have any money youre not shielded from lifes difficulties right if you have a medical bill you know its the end of the [ __ ] world if you know i if you have    you know you get pulled over and you gotta pay a ticket and you cant pay that ticket and now you got another ticket and now you got called into court but you cant pay for a lawyer and now you end up in jail its like this neverending cycle so you have to have a certain level of financial success to allow you to find yourself and luckily thats where im at now but i think you have to its theres a way to get there without having to fully pursue that monetary success in the first place and i think thats by having a very real conversation with yourself with your family and sitting down and defining what success looks like for you is that success look like consistent time with your family and spending time doing fun things that maybe dont cost a bunch of money do cost some mental effort on your side good question to ask yourself is would you rather be young and poor or rich and old right and i think that really can define what the value is in each its like the time that you can spend on yourself and then your young healthy body doing fun things that youre not never going to have the ability to do being and having five million dollars doesnt mean you can go rock climbing in the desert you know if thats something that you wanted to do it doesnt mean that you can go immediately go run a marathon all it means is youre really just shielded from some of the malevolence in life and youre stuck in the matrix right because if you have that money then all of your friends probably have that money too and you have to perpetuate this belief system that money is happiness because if you dont and you dont feel fulfilled at that point that you have all this money and youve worked so hard to get there hours a week for years to get to that position or you know years to get to that position now youre years later you have everything that you worked for your definition of what you thought success would be and now you feel empty its like thats scary right why give up years of your life for the hopes of happiness when happiness is never going to be found in some thing right and i think theres a really good Terrence McKenna quote that   kind of puts these things in perspective and like how we view success and how weve you know this idea consumption at whatever cost to find value its so terrance come out terence mckenna said this see he said we have to create culture dont watch tv dont read magazines dont even listen to npr create your own roadshow the nexus of space and time where you are now the most immediate sector of your universe and if youre worrying about michael jackson or bill clinton or somebody else then you are disempowered youre giving it all away to icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like x or you want to have lips like why which is funny with all life is today in the female society this is [ __ ] brained this kind of thinking this is all cultural diversion and what is real is you and your friends and your associations and your highs and your orgasms and your hopes and your plans and your fears and we are told no were unimportant youre peripheral get a degree get a job get a this get of and then youre a player you dont even want to play in that game you want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a halfbaked [ __ ] consuming all this trash thats being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world damn its like you really almost need to break that down and so what i think its saying like the matrix right that idea of procured life right by you know and thats mentioned in the idea of cultural engineers and i said that before weve been programmed to think this way so deeply ingrained in our modern society is the idea of consumerism and the only way to escape that is to not play the game its like the way that we define success today is by having a nice [ __ ] highrise in miami and having an aston martin sitting in the [ __ ] the parking lot below that you get to go walk down to and drive at [ __ ] am and go to your job that you hate to afford the [ __ ] that you think that you want so that you can appear to be a certain person so [ __ ] that dude its like in todays world the end goal should be like self reliance complete self reliance like get a decent sized house on a big ass piece of land get some you know have a water source have the ability to provide for your family without the need of the playing the game of those cultural engineers like you want to reclaim your mind and get out of the hands of the culture who want to turn you into a halfbaked [ __ ] consuming all the trash is being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world its all to take you away from this idea that you dont have to play their game right you dont have to be in you dont have to want the highrise in miami you can want a decentsized house on the plot of land and have the same [ __ ] clothes to wear every day and a nice enough car to get you where you need to go so you can do the things that you enjoy doing and then stop playing the game the nexus of space where you are now the most immediate sector of your universe without worrying about michael jackson or bill clinton or kim kardashian or caitlyn jenner or [ __ ] politics create a universe where youre happy doing the things that you want to do where you dont have to play the cultural games like play it until play it with the end goal in mind that as soon as you can [ __ ] get out of it the whole point of the game is to get out of the game the whole play point of understanding youve been programmed is to unprogram yourself and get into a program free life right get to a point where you dont need to be endlessly consuming you dont need to be endlessly running towards money to fuel that consumption right and its not even just the consumption of money or the its the consumption of entertainment its the consumption of netflix and    you know news and facebook and social media and you know this world has been so curated for you and youve weve all fallen for every trap of it not only the money trap not only the fame trap or the success trap or the entertainment trap or the free time trap or the you know all of these things are designed to suck you away from the from understanding that the power lies with you and your family and your the people that you surround yourself with and your true happiness of the things that you enjoy doing all of this all of this the evil of consumerism was planned would never have been able to so ingrain itself in our culture without the use of financial leverage of the banks so when you realize that consumerism is the goal debt is the vehicle and you are the victim you are just the a number a social security number that they look at to push the consumption of their products to make them more money to give them and further pursue this idea of success and so i think a new a better way to think about it is to redefine how we view our daytoday lives redefine why we go to work redefine why we do our jobs and i dont know if this is everybody because i know there are some people who chose their given career field out of the way that it makes them feel but i dont think thats most people right i think theres a lot of people especially in sales is a really venomous trap for people who are financially motivated or programmed to think that success is only specifically finances and this goes back to the saying of its not how its not what you make or how much you made its how you made it right its like where did those dollars come from and where did you spend those dollars if you make a bunch of money and then you go give it to walmart and amazon youre perpetuating this idea so not only should we be thinking of where is our money coming from and what is the energy that comes with that money right how do you feel about the money you made was it made rightfully did you feel good about how you made that money does it make you feel does it make you sleep better at night knowing that you helped somebody with that did you make it off the backs of manipulation or did you make it off of the backs of perpetuating negative ideas that are going to further seed themselves and the people that you put them in and cause negative outcomes so theres two sides of it its like you have to address first where are you making your money is are you making it from something thats fulfilling are you making it from something that makes you feel good or are you making it from something that you think may make you feel good in the future as a result of the amount that youre making from it because what youre going to find is its never going to be enough youre always going to need to make more because the second that you make a sixfigure income youre going to need to make a multiple sixfigure income because as you make more money your expenses go up and when you make a multiple sixfigure income youre going to need to make a sevenfigure income because now youre around the real wealthy people and they make you feel like [ __ ] because all youre driving is that nice new mercedes and now hes got an aston martin in that new miami high rise we were talking about right so its a constantly per perpetuating cycle and you have to [ __ ] cut the head off of that snake yourself and it doesnt feel good initially but overall its going to be whats best for you its going to be whats best for your relationships and its going to be whats best for your family so figure out what it is that would make you feel in making that money its not about how much youre making it its about how you how you made it where that came from and how that making that money makes you feel and then theres that other side of it right not only cut off the head but cut off the tail are you perpetuating this idea of consumerism are you feeding big box corporations who have a bottom line or are you giving your money to mom and pop shops are you shopping at kroger and consuming [ __ ] food constantly or are you going to the farmers market and getting something thats truly nourishing for you physically and not only that but youre giving your mind one of the best things i love about going to the farmers market is handing cash to a farmer directly to a farmer not to a cashier who then hands it to a manager who then hands it to a security company who then takes it to a bank who gives it to the bank who puts it into the savings account who puts it in to their own investments for their own bottom line and then no [ __ ] that i give it to a farmer who takes it home and then he gives it to another farmer so that he can feed his family and thats cutting off the head and cutting off the tail and thats the end goal dont perpetuate this cycle dont perpetuate this idea that success means that you have to [ __ ] sell your soul for a miami high rise [ __ ] that the end goal is selfsustainability the end goal is happiness the end goal not just financial freedom but personal freedom time would you rather be old and rich or young and poor and ill take young and poor every [ __ ] day because i have more time to spend i have more time to spend with my family i have more time to spend on myself i have more time to spend on being there for people like more time to give people personally that may affect their lives positively which will come back around and allow me to have more positive relationships its like yeah i could give those hours to [ __ ] mark zuckerberg write code thats gonna [ __ ] tear down the democracy i can make [ __ ] bracelets that i love making maybe i dont know whatever it is that you do that fulfills you and find a [ __ ] community thats out there that wants to further perpetuate this idea that the end goal is not consumerism the end goal is fulfillment not the idea that you may someday have fulfillment but finding fulfillment today and because you have fulfillment today knowing that at any given [ __ ] second if i die i did what i could reach fulfillment now and not push it off until im years old or years old and im not saying go spend your [ __ ] money frivolously and party all you want im saying put your money away stop buying the brand new [ __ ] yeezys dont buy that planned obsolence from iphones stop playing the game go home spend some time with your family write down your goals figure out what it is that would find you true fulfillment and if youre years old and youre listening to this right now and youre waking the [ __ ] up and going this isnt what i thought it would look like right i spent all these years working so hard and i didnt get the outcome that i was hoping for im not financially successful im not wealthy im not [ __ ] that you didnt lose the game the game was [ __ ] rigged dont play the game anymore find fulfillment today do things you enjoy spend time with your family right go on a [ __ ] walk read a book go back to school find a topic that gives you fulfillment and give everything you can to that because knowing that whether i die at years old or years old or years old or [ __ ] years old regardless of thats today or years down the road i will know that i did what i could today to find fulfillment now and not pushing that off for some idea that was given to me by corporations who wanted to take advantage of me so that they could make their billions and i think youll find that your relationships improve i think youll find that your depression may start to dissolve i think that youll find that youll have more energy because when you wake the [ __ ] up and go to some soulsucking job because you want possibly this [ __ ] this [ __ ]    what is it slot machine where you spin it enough times maybe hopefully someday youll [ __ ] win some money but in the meantime what you dont realize is the algorithms are made so that they make more than you no matter what and thats the same thing with modern corporations dont play the game if you enjoy being a great [ __ ] salesman start your own company start it from scratch find a product that you [ __ ] love that you know is going to positively impact the people that youre working and then go find everybody in the world that you can give it to dont go work at some [ __ ] i dont know [ __ ] sales career because you want to find fulfillment through an idea that was pushed to you by [ __ ] amazon of what success looks like or by instagram or by some [ __ ] fake ass year old who rented a lamborghini for a day to make you feel like [ __ ] about yourself enough to buy his [ __ ] program lets find another quote jesus so heres a good one says lets see so whats great about this country is america started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest you can be watching tv and see a cocacola and you can know that the president drinks coke kim kardashian drinks coke and just think you too can drink coke a coke is a coke and the amount of money can get you a better coke than the one bum the bum on the corner is drinking all the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good that was andy warhol on i think thats interesting because its like the percentage the minuscule percentage improvements between modern middle class and modern wealth is very little compared to what it used to be like if you were [ __ ] poor in yeah your [ __ ] sucked dude you were [ __ ] [ __ ] in the woods you were going and hunting your own food you were starving half the [ __ ] time your kids were underweight your house was [ __ ] had damn dirt floors if you were lucky enough to have a house but if you were wealthy there was a huge difference like [ __ ] crazy difference in the way that you lived your life but today its like its such a small minuscule percentage difference of the quality of life that you live you know the [ __ ] guy in the side of the road has whos got a cardboard sign asking you for money has an iphone in his pocket you know the same iphone the president does the same iphone mark zuckerberg has the same iphone jeff [ __ ] bezos has right and maybe thats a guy on the side of the roads a bad idea if he doesnt go home to a house but a lot of them may and so the house that you have today the modern home in the modern mansion both usually keep their heat in the winter they both usually have carpet on the floors if you want it a cokes a coke right whether youre the president whether youre jeff [ __ ] bezos or whether youre austin adams shooting the podcast in your [ __ ] basement i think its but its hard to make that point drive home and its like you youre still watching the same game if you paid for the tickets or the tickets now the tickets are a little bit more exciting right maybe you can afford a [ __ ] jet ski but youre still at the game right its like you still get the coke you still get to appreciate you know television you dont have to have a inch or a inch projector to appreciate a movie the amount of time that youre going to spend giving up your life and your happiness and your energy and your    your like life force to go into getting that inch projector screen movie room over a inch tv that you bought from best buy for bucks its not worth it man you know you gave up so much more than you got out of it and you were [ __ ] duped and you should have spent spending that time on yourself you should have been spending that time with your family with your friends with new hobbies or new experiences so get the [ __ ] out of it man like get out of the matrix and realize that none of this is for you right none of this consumerism is positive for you or your family its going to put you in more debt its going to cause what like percent of divorces are caused by financial problems in the whole goal is to keep you consuming right consuming entertainment consuming products and trading all of that consumption for the real the only thing with real value in life and thats time lets see if i got anything else here for us i think thats it guys you know the goal is selfsufficiency the goal is not the miami high rise the goal is the nice [ __ ] house on the plot of land where you get to like the american dream is has been you know again its been hijacked its like they took this idea of what happiness could be and the american idea of happiness and the homestead and being able to be selfsufficient and they turned it into something that being completely reliant on the machine and if the machine stops so does your happiness even though you never had it right you never had that happiness because its just a its a fictitious    fictitious its like this its like there theres a this is a great quote i was watching the movie    soul with my daughter and    in the movie the guy goes and he wants to be a famous jazz musician and    he works his whole life to be a famous jazz musician and he knew that once he got to that point it was going to make him happy it was going to make him fulfilled and he worked so hard to get there and somewhere along the line he lost that faith that he could do it and he [ __ ] died as a as a teacher and    but he came back to life somehow right theres a whole movie you should [ __ ] watch its a great movie   but he died along the way and he came back to life and he and he finally got this opportunity to be to work with a famous jazz musician and he did everything he wanted he killed it that night and he put on the performance of a lifetime and at the end of the night he walked out of the bar he realized he reached his goal and he wasnt happy and he looked to the musician that he was working with now and he said it just doesnt feel like i thought it would feel and she said theres this old story about a fish theres two fish theres old fish in the young fish and the young fish comes up to the old fish and the young fish says im looking for something im looking for this thing and i know when i find it its going to make me happy im looking for this thing and the old the old fish goes what is it tell me what it is and ill help you find it and the young fish looks to the old fish and the young fish says im looking for the ocean and im searching for everywhere for it and i cant find it the old fish looks to the young fish the old fish says honey its called water and its all around us right now and the young fish looks a goldfish and goes thats ridiculous and swims away what that what i took from that story is that when youre looking for happiness or youre searching for fulfillment through constructs youll never get it youll youre never gonna find the ocean because the ocean is a construct but water is all around you every day fulfillment is around you every day and the ability to take advantage of that will only be clouded if youre always looking for the ocean reevaluate your life if this is something that youve struggled with you know maybe its time to sit down and have a real conversation with yourself and see if are you doing something right now thats fulfilling for you and are you spending your money in a way that is perpetuating this idea or are you spending your money in a way thats impacting other people who are searching or who are finding fulfillment in themselves and not through consumerism so i hope that gave you some insight you know its a little bit different the last few times there was some good historical aspects of this that i think we could touch on in another day but i think this opens up a really good conversation so if this is something youve struggled with this is something youve dealt with if this is something youre currently dealing with or if any of this resonated for you leave me a comment let me know find me on    you know you can leave comments on the instagram page at red pill revolt   or go to youtube and    you can watch this    through video if youre on youtube go subscribe to the [ __ ]    podcasts    through the channel the website is i choose dot red go to itunesredcom is for losers and    subscribe wed love to hear back    some feedback from you guys on this episode and    another day well get into a little bit about the history of modern consumerism how we got there who was a part of it    some of the disgusting pieces of modern advertising but for now i think you got some good homework assignments have a great day guys i hope you took something from this and i will see you soon bye