What Will the Economic Crisis's effects been on western mainstream culture?

[ontheroad1242]

At the moment i think most Mainstream Western culture is a representation from the mass media. The Mass media sets the culture picture which sets out our lifestyles to be materialistic and consume of course that's what the government wants. But with the looming economic impact on the world the bourgeois or middle class population of the western world won't be able to live in the materialistic lifestyle which has been common and lets not forget the last time there was the depression sure it was bad but the people didn't feel the full effects of it because the second world war pulled them out. Will this open our eyes from the cultural illusion and maybe strike a change in consciousness or a second cultural revolution or something even bigger because it all comes down to the money folks, anyway my point is i think materialism is a distraction from inner reflection and spiritual growth will this change something with the way people think? because people won't be able to live as they did before, they are saying this is like nothing we have ever seen.

 

[rotorua624]

Its interesting because while we can look at what has happened to date (ie the sway that materialism and the neoliberal model has had on society and the role of the individual in society) and say that our lack of self-reflection, and our tendency to follow what the media suggests is due to materialism etc, the impact of job losses/housing losses/rise in crime rates/potential rise in suicide rates/reformation of the busines world etc - all this "new" stuff acts as yet another distraction for those people not yet ready to take a good long look at themselves and wonder why they "followed" the media/business world in the first place. These sorts of things happen all the time (world wars, natural disasters, terrorist acts right down to personal losses of family/money/homes) but that doesnt create a new wave of self-reflection that lasts very long at all. I think we can hope that as a society we will find some sort of balance to the extreme we have been living of late - but it wont be widespread (until the media helps make it so) and it wont be overnight (regardless of how bad things get). Just my two cents worth.

 

[Brigid P]

What do you think of a new economy afterwards that has new players, new suppliers, and new supplies!