Should you be a consumer?

Photograph depicting Dollars
By Jp Valery

Should you be a consumer?
Thursday – October 23, 2025

No, you shouldn't be a consumer and here's why. Well, I will explain why I believe that it is bad to consume but I do need to make my case so do bear with me. Most people that are consumers belong to the populist, plebeian horde and they consume simply because they've constructed their life around instant pleasure, and they exist in the world merely to uphold the material order. These people, the vast majority of the population, live for the moment only and they have been completely divorced from the traditional and the proper way of life and this process of alienation has been progressive and slow but history has shown how men have become more and more indulgent in the materialist order and in the materialist way of thinking. If you don't exist as a mindless consumer in the material domain, then you are either living in poverty or you have retired from the world. I still suggest that you retire from the world and you can read more about that here. Life does seem pretty pointless doesn't it? Well, that's what the serpent wants you to think, or really feel. You don't need anything actually and you don't even need the internet, even though you do need the internet to read this post, but if you were truly ascendant then this information should be redundant. I do understand that most people would struggle quite a bit with leaving the internet and other material commodities behind and that's why I believe that you don't have to give up on everything, but at least I recommend that you attempt to get out of the economy, because you can never be happy in the economy; there simply is not way of life in the economy, unless you are a mindless consumer. First and foremost, I believe that you should ask yourself this: what is the purpose of money? Well, the purpose of money should really be to create more money, in keeping with the quantitative tendencies of the modern world and I believe the best way of creating more money would be to live off of loans, and indeed this is the way most rich people live, but in order for you to live off of loans you'd need money in the first place and you likely don't have that kind of money, which means that you are out of luck, unless you can find a suitable way to create money to then use in order to take out loans and I would also recommend living off of the interest generated by investing that money. Indeed, you don't want to work for someone and you don't want to consume stuff that only eats up your money so that you can go back to work and continue the whole circle, or to close the circle. No, you want to break free, and by breaking free you can at least give yourself an opportunity to get out of the world. Of course, you don't have to become rich, you can also attend a religious seminar and leave all worldly possessions behind in the name of Jesus or the Buddha. There are many men that have simply decided to turn to the creator and to live in austerity and this would, from a moral point of view, be the best way to leave the world behind, but let's not kid ourselves, this would also be the hardest way to leave the world behind. But if you've reached the conclusion that the world is an evil and corrupt place, then you have two options: either you change the world, and good luck with that; or you leave the world behind, and if you've decided wisely to leave the world behind, you need a plan. Something I can always recommend to any man that seeks higher insight is to take a long trip on the high seas and to clear your thoughts. It's very important and healthy to get away from society, especially if you live in the imperial core. But as long as you rely on the material then you can never really make yourself break free from the system, because the system will consume you eventually. I believe as well that hysteria, popular hysteria, is a driving force when it comes to consumerism: people tend to follow other people into the abyss, and instead of relying on their senses they rely on the political object in other people and how they relate to those other people. Yes, if there's a substantial anthropological distance between you and the "others" then it will be easier for you to show restraint, and that's also why I believe that becoming a nomad could be a good thing, for that will do you good in terms of relating to the likes of other people. To be the perpetual outsider has a lot of upsides, but for most people this would also quite frankly and clearly be too hard, since most people rely on the common and good feeling they think they have with other so-called "like minded individuals". Of course, this idea is absolute nonsense, but I will cover that at another time in my "Collectivism & Individualism series".

    So what can you do to become a non-consumer? As I've previously explained: you need to throw away all notions of needing more material comfort in your life and you need to realize that you can never have too much material comfort. People in our modern days still suffer from all sorts of psychological complexes connected to their perceived material standing in society. As long as you can eat good, drink good, and live good, what's there to complain about? Well, there's plenty to complain about and even the richest man will find ways to make his existence as the richest man a living hell, for such is just the nature of humanity when they are governed by materialism. Apropos "complexes": what is an inferiority complex? Actually I find that concept pretty funny and I even laugh out loud when thinking about it sometimes. Why are you inferior to someone else? Well, mostly because you've decided in your mind that you are inferior to that other or those other people and really the only one that can take you out of this self fulfilled prophecy is yourself, because once you've started your way down the inferiority complex road, you're most likely going to make yourself less and inferior. Only you have the power to make yourself inferior. Sure, other people can make you superior, but only you can allow yourself to fall beneath other men and once you realize this power, material considerations will no longer matter. Indeed, most great metaphysical traditions have thought this and they're all essentially right but for different reasons. To be modest is by no means to make yourself inferior, it's actually to remove yourself from the materialist race to the bottom, and that is indeed a very good idea. So when you're mindlessly consuming, you are essentially stressing yourself out for no other reason than attempting to run away from your own self imposed inferiority. This is perhaps the main reason why I highly dislike the bourgeois, because they have no principles other than their own reputation, and they're the same everywhere and in all societies, not my cup of tea.

    In the end, only you can liberate yourself from the consumerist order, and as long as you cling onto empty platitudes and ideas about you in relation to society you can never truly be free.

Reginald Drax – October 24, 2025.