April 4th - Ideas Underpinning our culture

Central to our industrial capitalist society is that for economic growth to continue we must all be CONSUMERS. 
I'm helped here by what I've learned about 'hegemony' so I'll go back to my post of March 21st for this snippet - 
'hegemony' describes the world view – the reality -  which is taken on by a population.  The word came from the Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci, who believed that because what we believe and the values  we hold dear form the basis of our way of life and support the status quo, it follows that for change to occur the task is to change our ideas and values. 

For economic growth to continue we must all believe that our success and worth is measured by our material wealth.  
So we work all hours God sends in order to change the colour of our kitchen when the fashion changes. We struggle to keep up with the latest fashions. We spend money on the latest gadgets and foreign holidays.
It's easy to see why we take on this belief - buying stuff meets our needs to be part of the group and to be sexually attractive and it feeds our appetite for novelty. We love something new and interesting.  
David Edwards in his wonderful book 'Free to be Human' contends that industrial capitalism, depending as it does on economic growth, relies on us remaining discontented. 
If we are unhappy with how we look we will buy cosmetics, hair dye and botox and race to keep up with the latest fashions.  'Three inch high heels are so last year' is a powerful message encouraging us to throw out our old shoes and buy new.  A powerful fashion message attaches to denim jeans:  Originally jeans were made of strong fabric which would last a lifetime.  Not good news for capital. So we are faced with the fashion choice - do you carry on wearing last year's old jeans which were perhaps straight legged?  No, shock horror, this year to be 'in fashion' you must have flared bottomed jeans.  So, out with the old and in with the new.
Being consumers keeps us all anxious and discontented ...  if we are hard-up, how can we possibly live up to the expectations of fashion? What do I need to buy/do to be seen as 'cool'? 
Even those who are able to meet the demands of the consumer market, who have the homes, the fashion and the cars which mark them as 'successful' have problems and soon discover that happiness or well-being through material success is an illusion.  Oliver James 'Affluenza' very succinctly shows how the wealthiest people in the world are often very unhappy, depressed, drug addicted and the rest.
I'm spending a lot of time thinking of capitalism as the 'baddy' in my search for what's gone wrong in the world but before I try to get a balanced view - see what capitalism has done for us - I want to think a bit about 'globalisation' and how industrial capitalism has impacted on cultures worldwide.