consumer

People don't want anything for FREE unless the price is not reasonable.

The world economy would collapse if a significant number of people were to realize and then act on the realization that it is possible to enjoy many if not most of the things that they enjoy without first having to own them.

For their never-ending endeavours to obtain or retain wealth, countries desperately need companies, because they__nlike most human beings__ave the means of production, and human beings, because they__nlike all companies__ave the means of reproduction.

In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the crimes (both the artist and consumer of art) is constructed as marginal, powerless to act, and so exculpated from action, passive subject of a complex pleasure, condemning and yet enjoying suffering imposed on others, and condemning himself for his own enjoyment. In this masochistic celebration of disempowerment, the sharpest pleasure recorded is that of the death of some important part of humanity. The dignity of human life is the ultimate victim of Lorrain's art, thrown away on a welter of delighted self-disgust.

For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone.

Modern consumer life is a form of extreme passive violence against all people.

Here, in Lorrain's poisoned little jewel of a tale (__he Man Who Made Wax Heads_) the consummate achievement of decadent art is caught in miniature. The genius of the artist entangles perpetrators and victims in a sticky web of perverse delights, in which exploitation becomes collusion, the ripples of guilt spread outward, and the real criminal slips away. In the end, responsibility is lodged firmly with the consumer, forced _ he must confess _ by his own perverse desires, to buy into the values of this particularly black market.

If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, value is in the mind of the consumer.