"Enjoy Life!".."Always Real"

'So the industry seeks to break the link between soda and disease, and backs research to support that view. Its companies cultivate a health-conscious image – a tactic that, conveniently, also sells beverages.'
--The Guardian.

~

In the land of the pure coke has decided to fund the "Aquatic Centre" here for a cool $2 million. I suppose, with Pepsi funding the dining centre (another $500,000 this year) you might say it's an even playing field. 

When I suggested to the Vice-Chancellor that we should, perhaps, impose a sugar-tax or ban the drinks altogether you can imagine what the response was. Money talks and big money talks the loudest. 

I think the game is up. Over the last thirty years or so it hasn't just been the growth of right-wing religious loonies that has been a destabilizing force; the solidification of right and centrist-right parties everywhere in the era of neo-liberalism has helped cement the view that everyone and everything has its price (universal commensurability and exchange). 

Whatever might have been able to put a brake on that process has been systematically dismantled (trade unions, universities, the public sector and its ethos of public service, religion with its traditional restraints on accumulation and greed and the political realm that was supposed to represent long-term and collective interests). 

Instead, what we have is political capture: corruption, fraud, special interest groups, lobbyists and the manipulation of ideas, preferences and sensibilities by that vast oligarchic machine called the media.

In the world of 'liquid modernity' the current image is the only currency..."thought for the day".  Everything is capital: humanity, sociality, knowledge, information, the erotic. Everyone is a small-time capitalist aiming for the big time: we are encouraged to invest in: property, our future, our children's future, education. The new and improved me, upgraded, super-sized, plugged in, dressed down and wired-up. The hipster rebel without a cause, who is too cool for "Causes"...always real because he knows there is nothing to do but enjoy life, the wonderful mid-afternoon Californian life full of smiles and genial conversation.

Which is all fine. I ain't complaining. Just don't tell me that the life of the Eloi has anything to do with freedom!