Ubiquitous Assimilation

What is ubiquitous assimilation?  This three minute clip from the 2011 film, Detachment sums up what it means really nicely.

I am pretty sure that no sensible person can argue about the fact that we live in a period of time where society suffers from ubiquitous assimilation in a way that is scarily similar to the Borg.

As a Tiny Houser, I would like to think that the Star Trek: Next Generation writers were wrong.  The Borg are science fiction characters, right?  Sadly, I don’t think the concept of them is really so far fetched.  I think that most people claim individualism but really, in this society, your distinctiveness is not assimilated into the group; Borgists of the world have their distinctiveness written over, disposed of, like an old floppy disk.

This Borgism applies heavily to the way that we live.  The marketing holocaust reaches into every area of our life right down to how we live.  Really, I would like to believe that we do not live in a world where everyone is not madly consuming stuff.  Taking way more than they need, building huge homes which they cannot afford, filling them with stuff that they also cannot afford… just because advertising, television, and social pressure are telling them that this will make them happy.  Assimilate, assimilate, assimilate… shop, shop, shop… CONSUME!

The crazy that is packed into this doublethink is lost on most people.  I can’t tell you how many people I have heard bragging about the fact that they LOVE to shop… Love to buy… Even LOVE to be capitalists!  Funny but these people never seem that happy.  The seem too busy, too rushed, with never enough time to sit for a coffee.  They don’t have time to enjoy any moments.  They explain that they “gotta get to work, gotta get to the mall… My life is too busy to stop” they say.

Ubiquitous assimilation/doublethink.

I encourage you to consider if any of this post applies to your own housing and/or your stuff collection situation.  Does this apply your life in any way at all?

I am not saying that you should all buy land, build a Tiny House and set up a farm.  This would be as absurdly Borgist (though not as wasteful or consumeristic) as the current big pile of crap in a big house.  When everyone does the same thing it is conformity.  a Tiny House may not fit your NEEDS.  I am not asking you all to mould yourself into something that does not fit you.

The current way of life for most of us in the (so called) developed world is not something that every person should want to do… still, they do it.  What I do ask is that you to consider is all that stuff really making you happy?  Or, is the way you live your life being constructed and ruled by marketing.  Are you living beyond your needs and if so, whom are you are making happy while complying with the ubiquitous assimilation to advertising and consumer culture?

It is obvious, that this constant assault of advertising has created huge social pressure because it has triggered in us the need to do better so that we can be measured by some artificially constructed corporate concept of success.  It is human nature (for most of us) to want to be accepted and looked up to, but are we doing this in a way that is truly giving us a better quality of life?  Are we happy?  Are you happy?

I ask you, have you been Borged or are you still an individual?

Too, if you have just now come to understand that you have been Borged, are you already so much a part of the corporate collective that you can no longer escape it and find your individual route?