Seda Dilara Kuru
Going through the world we come across many events, meet people and go to places. With the senses we have, we look into the world and make sense of it. What we hear and see effects the way we perceive the world and with our though processes we shape our world. As we grow our languages grow and we can express our thoughts and ourselves more clearly through our image and speaking. Our perception of things and ourselves rely on our past experiences and our roots. The way we perceive ourselves effects the perception of our world and vice versa. We might look to ourselves and think we decide completely freely, what we think, talk about or wear, drink and eat in life but society effects all of us and we might be perceived by huge companies as a buyer only. Sometimes we are buyers before humans to those big corporations and capitalist economies takes advantage of even of our most basic needs.
Eating is one of our most important needs. When we are young and our parents take care of us we rarely realise what ingredients go into meals and pay little mind to what meals should be consisted of. As we go into our adult lives we face many choices regarding the food we eat. The fast-food industry is all around us and we rarely wait to be served food anymore. Fast-food is packaged to be eaten anywhere and it is quick and easy. Students consume it quite a lot too, so it can be said that it is cheap. What goes into the creation of such successful chain-markets? Molleindustria, a radical game company, created a social commentary game regarding one of the biggest chain fast-food companies. In the game, it can be observed that sowing the crops to create the buns of a burger a forest is destroyed. The increase the production of burger meat drugs are given to cows. The employees work in tiring conditions and fired when they show that they are not happy. In the game, there’s also a marketing division of the company that fight claims that this food creates obesity and hurts their customers. When we are hungry we rarely think of the production part of the food we eat, but when it comes to fast-food chains there’s almost always a dark side.
Our perception of self is greatly related to our bodies. While in puberty our bodies change and grow, and how tall, skinny, fat or short we are might start to matter more. The world we live in mostly serves the skinny and able bodies so we try to make ourselves that kind of body. In order to become the ideal body, we see in the magazines we try to avoid eating unhealthily, which usually means fast-food. When we get the chance to make our own meals there are still choices to make, we want the freshest, healthiest food item to start with. What we eat means a great deal to our health. Media covers this type of subject quite a lot, what is GMO or non-GMO, what are the health risks of consuming gluten and does a high carbohydrate diet make us fat etc. Genetically manipulated crops are painted to be the enemy but the domestication of certain crops such as banana created the fruit we love eating today. Fad diets tell us what to eat and how to exercise in order to achieve an ideal body.
Since multi-billion dollar industries benefit from people buying their products, they not only create the products but make the excuses to buy them too. Nowadays there are multiple holidays that require gift giving. Getting closer to mother’s day it is easy to see plenty of commercials telling us to go buy a teapot, luxury clothing, vacuum cleaner or a piece of jewellery for our mothers. The media and the marketing creates a need to buy gifts or else we are incomplete and don’t appreciate our mothers enough. We are pressured into thinking that we must buy things for our mothers to make them happy. The same goes for father’s day, the New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day and even our birthdays. It has been speculated that Hallmark created new holidays to boost card sales, such as Grandfather’s Day, Secretary Day.
Capitalist societies are built on our self-perceptions and our ambition to be perfect and ideal. It is important to remember that not every single thought that belongs to us is not fabricated by us. We rely on our experiences and cultures when we perceive the world but not every structure in world is out there for our benefit. While it is hard to disassociate ourselves from the toxic sides of the society it is still possible to protect our minds from it. We have the ability to break down and rebuild our world both in our perceptive minds and in the context of today’s reality by examining, rethinking and recreating ourselves.