Toothpaste, maple flavoring and freedom

While I wasn't looking, the packaging of toothpaste changed from the old-fashioned tube to a new kind of tube that stands up. I hate them. I hate them so much that yesterday I ventured out to buy toothpaste in the old-fashioned tube. No luck. Apparently this tube design has been discontinued. So I'm stuck with something I hate.

I'm reminded of a few years ago when Starbucks introduced a new maple-flavored coffee drink. I loved it. I often ordered it. But I was a minority, and they discontinued it. In the marketplace, the desires of a minority carry no weight.

Now in the larger scheme of things, toothpaste and maple-flavoring are insignificant. However, they are symptomatic of a larger reality, that as consumers we are pawns. We don't choose the products offered to us. Corporations do. Of course, they do studies and make decisions -- but this is a leveling process that in no way encourages personal freedom. All this -- the reduction of choice in the marketplace -- is happening parallel to another cultural movement, the sudden interest in my opinion by media of all stripes, from Facebook to cable news shows. Call in, log in, and give us your opinion! As if it mattered. This is a ploy to give me the false impression that my opinion does matter but in fact it only matters if it's the majority opinion.

In every aspect of life, consumers are pawns with fewer and fewer choices, and the culture continues to move in the direction of increasing Homo consumerus, the species defined as consumers.

As Norman Brown wrote, Doing nothing, if properly understood, is the supreme action.