The Increasing Commidification of Consciousness Itself

One can imgaine a day arriving when human-beings are so alienated from the direct experience of consciousness itself that there is an increasing emphasis placed upon seeking consciousness through the marketplace. Perhaps that day has arrived. Perhaps that day is already here! A day that could well stand to live in infamy; a turning point.

You would think--or assume--that the experience of being conscious, of being a sentient creature, would be innate and natural. You might even suppose that it is not that which needs to be sought out; which requires purchase in the marketplace. And yet look at the marketplace. Just look at the all of the consciousness-commodities being offered.

Just realize how much we have to spend and how desperately we have to seek for that which is clearly ever-present. Consciousness. Awarenesss. The basic fact of sentient existence. So decidedly alienated from the basic fact of sentient existence has humanity increasingly become that there is now the clear and unadulterated pursuit of the experience of consciousness--as if it were a special commodity reserved for the few, the elite, the well-to-do.

The more exalted experiences of consciousness itself are spoken of--by that I mean, 'pitched,' 'marketed'--being special states that can only be attained through special processes that can only be discovered via special teachers for a very special fee.

That exaltation of consciousness is where the money is at, where the apparent prestige in being a 'teacher for the Ages.' Not in the ordinary, basic, mundane fact of being-itself... but in the rarified atmosphere of special Evolutionary Enlightenment Processes and Integral Life Practices.

The 'how' of this is all in the seeking. It is not in the realization. It is not in the cessation of the anxious pursuit of greater and greater spiritual attainments. The 'how' of the commodification of consciousness is the same as the 'how' of the rest of the process of commodification as it pertains to the so-called 'objective world': ceaseless and unending consumerism. 

Karl Marx was the first we know of who spoke of the consequences of what happens when the value of a human-being's labour is not fully realized by that person. His contention was that in a Capitalist System much--if not most--of the value of a person's labour is accumulated by the capitalist.... as capital. This leaves the labourer in a state of deprivation: the total value of his or her labour has not been granted to her. The so-called 'surplus value' has been divided up amongst the capital investors... again, as capital.

The worker ends up leaving his or her job with an emptiness---with a value deficit. That deficit, like all vacuums is one that Nature abhors. The result is the desperate attempt to deal with that 'value-deficit' through the consumption of other commodities that have been manufactured and produced by other workers in a similar situation---i.e., commodities that they helped produce, but which left them with a deficit.

Mark spoke of the process of commodification as it pertained to the material world. He was dealing in the realm of objects and natural processes. My hope is to show how that same process Marx described now pertains to the spiritual world---in the realm of subjects and psychological processes.  That not only are we alienated from our labour by the Capitalist System.... but that when this same Capitalist System is applied to what we might call 'the spiritual' it serves to alienates us from the most basic fact of our existence.... sentience.... consciousness.