THE MONSTER AND HIS KEEPER

In the Reading "The Noble Feat of Nike," a piece by Johan Norberg he argues that the expansion and reach of nike into foreign countries such as Vietnam is a good thing he explains that now they have double the wages they would have on a farm, double the jobs available, healthcare for the workers and bicycles to ride to work. But Johan has missed many large concepts that are very important and devastating to the Globe. First off he didn't mention that vietnam has very poor air quality and as a factory zone, like in a piece by Naomi Klein, she mentions that factory zones are independent of local and state law. So air and land quality is completely devastated. Also, like in Jamaica, as presented by a piece by Dicken, the reason people can't farm and make money is because of globalization and the opening of borders, so like in jamaica, where the banana was once the number one export, now they have to compete with world established business and the WTO with Chicueta. Johan also forgets to mention that according to the HDI, the vietnamese HDI is below the world average of .68, vietnam is .59, one of the WORLDS LOWEST HDI's below the Average in Asia as well.

What is Our Limit???

"The Problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness," says Wendell Berry in his article Faustian Economics. When you buy something, you feel good about yourself, and as you grow up, you here that happiness and love are limitless. From a completely neuro-science point of view, happiness and love are simply neural stimulation in the brain that causes the release of morphine in our brain to create a 'good feeling.' Therefore, our consumption is a drug, a replacement for real social encounters, releasing morphine into our brain and my point is that we feel like we can buy everything. Or moreso, we feel like we can buy just "one more thing," each time. We over-consume because a new thing makes us feel good and that feeling makes us want it more and our purchasing becomes limitless. If we continue these habit however, the movie, claims that we will begin to trully realize our waste and loss of resources by the year 2070. have we gone too far. are we there yet?

This song explains a lot about the madness that advertisments and commodity culture can bring.....

Advertisements.

"The Artistic Qualities of an advertisement are not nearly as important as the ability of the advertisement to get attention and to drive home a selling point," says John Caples in "Layouts and Illustrations." Professional Film Critic Anandi Ramamurphy says that "Advertisements....are imbued with human characteristically." And although i agree with both of these statements, that ads are no longer a simple image on a page; that they are in fact a almost living breathing and talking selling point for an argument, I don't agree that they are a as manipulative and shaping as critics have subjected them too. As in many struggles, i believe their is an equilibrium to this commodity madness; yes, their are the extremists who manipulate and the passivist who get walked on, but if people simply payed attention and took control of their consumption, this consumer lifestyle could be a healthy way of finally breaking barriers between majorities and minorities.