Counter-sermon
Commentary: Communication theorist Norbert Bolz defends consumerism as a core Western value. He also demonstrates that optimism and critical reason are not mutually exclusive.
Commentary Communication theorist Norbert Bolz defends consumerism as a central Western value and shows that optimism and critical reason are not mutually exclusive. And shows that optimism and critical reason are not mutually exclusive. Norbert Bolz recently confidently announced in the journal Literaturen that nothing written by Theodor W. Adorno still counts in today's philosophy. "Bolz knocks Adorno off his pedestal", even the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was outraged by this patricide and asked in annoyance: "How come you want this today and that tomorrow? That you promote dental care in Essen and the consumer good child in Berlin? Sometimes you're a sociologist, then a communication theorist, then a media scientist, and now you're trying to pull off a coup and put on the mantle of a philosopher." Such malice is hardly able to challenge the contemporary apologist. After all, Bolz makes targeted use of the media and thinks little of the generation of professors who equate unworldliness with reason and incomprehensibility with intellectual depth (see page 21).
In his two books, "The Consumerist Manifesto" and "Conformists of Otherness", Bolz creates a bright alternative to the "Grand Hotel Abyss" of the Frankfurt School. While Adorno's epigones fixate on the destructive tendencies of modernity and preach sermons against the "culture industry" with its "inhumane logic of exploitation", Bolz defends hedonism and consumerism as a lifestyle because it is the "immune system of world society against the virus of fanatical religions". According to Bolz, everything that has been criticized as the "consciousness industry" since the halcyon days of the Frankfurt School fulfils the important task of symbolically creating alternity for people who have become indifferent to society: "Fashion gives the masses a comforting complacency with form."
Methodologically, Bolz is indebted to his mentors. In contrast to the "beautiful dream of a bad world", as prophets of doom conjure it up like a prayer wheel, optimist Bolz calls for the world to be seen as successful, freely based on Hegel's formula: What is real is reasonable and what is reasonable is real. Pessimism is ultimately lazy thinking, says Bolz, because it is easier to say no than to understand the world in all its complexity.
It is only logical that, for Bolz, advertising is not only a seduction of pleasure, but also a "permanent counter-sermon" to common cultural criticism. Advertising tells consumers that they do not have to feel guilty. Understood in this way, the "consumerist manifesto" is a valid counter-proposal to the aimless criticism of capitalism that is currently finding a broad breeding ground in the anti-globalization movement.
Samuel Helbling, Editor-in-Chief
In his two books, "The Consumerist Manifesto" and "Conformists of Otherness", Bolz creates a bright alternative to the "Grand Hotel Abyss" of the Frankfurt School. While Adorno's epigones fixate on the destructive tendencies of modernity and preach sermons against the "culture industry" with its "inhumane logic of exploitation", Bolz defends hedonism and consumerism as a lifestyle because it is the "immune system of world society against the virus of fanatical religions". According to Bolz, everything that has been criticized as the "consciousness industry" since the halcyon days of the Frankfurt School fulfils the important task of symbolically creating alternity for people who have become indifferent to society: "Fashion gives the masses a comforting complacency with form."
Methodologically, Bolz is indebted to his mentors. In contrast to the "beautiful dream of a bad world", as prophets of doom conjure it up like a prayer wheel, optimist Bolz calls for the world to be seen as successful, freely based on Hegel's formula: What is real is reasonable and what is reasonable is real. Pessimism is ultimately lazy thinking, says Bolz, because it is easier to say no than to understand the world in all its complexity.
It is only logical that, for Bolz, advertising is not only a seduction of pleasure, but also a "permanent counter-sermon" to common cultural criticism. Advertising tells consumers that they do not have to feel guilty. Understood in this way, the "consumerist manifesto" is a valid counter-proposal to the aimless criticism of capitalism that is currently finding a broad breeding ground in the anti-globalization movement.
Samuel Helbling, Editor-in-Chief
