Buy yourself a purpose!
Every pseudo-purpose is a recognition designed to shift the blame for all the world's evils onto us.
It’s been a long time since it was enough for a hairdresser to offer walk-ins and a good price, or for an ice cream kiosk to sell tasty ice cream and stay open late on summer evenings. Markets demand that we be critical consumers – otherwise, society won't progress! And under no circumstances must we feel that either our lives or our planet are finite.
We must demand more. Preferably indulge ourselves to death.
Companies develop quasi-purposes: visions that don't actually guide the business but mask a profit motive, which has proven to work exceptionally well in secular and affluent Sweden. The system-wide trust of the Swedish welfare state was taken over by the business sector. Swedes were classified as trend-sensitive early adopters – neoliberal code for "extreme willingness to buy thanks to artificial choice".
H&M wants to lead the transition towards circular and renewable fashion, Coop promises to make everyday life better and Swedbank is creating a better future. This is most evident in the old companies that grew alongside the Swedish middle class – the new demands that consumers are now allegedly making have created total confusion.
We were given quasi-purposes when the genuine ones became too expensive.
When all consumption – from fascist propaganda to cheap polyester jumpers – is called democracy and every customer journey has been A/B tested to perfection, there is no longer any room for the subversive. The principle of public access and the right of public access to nature act as perfect padding to make us feel our freedom is maximised.
From tweet to polling day and from sponsored post to African rubbish dump – the air is free as long as markets are allowed to regulate themselves. Bewitched by the reflections in shop windows, we all become complicit when conscious consumption is the only answer.
But every quasi-purpose is an admission. Food chains know that the good life is not available to everyone, and banks don't really believe they are enabling a better future for the many. Everyone should not involved – but that is not the point either. The mission is not change, but to shape a consumer who takes the blame themselves when everything collapses.