Comments on: Philip K. Dick’s Fantastic, Stigmatic View of Consumption

By: Robert Kozinets

Robert Kozinets — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 17:06:40 +0000

Who judges what is “trivial”? To my students and most practitioners I meet, most of the stuff we theorize about, and our theories themselves, are ridiculously very trivial. Total useless belly-gazing baloney. To high-falutin’ academics, selling job lots of liquid soap might seem very trivial and mundane. Trivia and trivial are just words that people use to devalorize the interests that other people have.

For most of my life, being interested in environmental matters was seen as “trivial.” I suspect for many that it still is.

I like Phil Dick’s orientation towards what is trivial. In one of my favorite quotes, he said “The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum.”

I guess you can’t get more devalorized or trivial than “trash.”

By: rpwagner

rpwagner — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:10:06 +0000

I dont think that sounds so weird.

The problem is that trivial consumption to us is not trivial consumption to them. What I (the researcher) consider as trivial is not what one interviewee consider as trivial. I think a good example is one of the movies that appeared in the especial edition of the CMC (thanks to Rob and Russ, now I could watch here in Brazil) where they collect so “trivial” stuff, but this trivial stuff have a SPECIAL meaning to them. I say SPECIAL (in caps) because these consumptions are like their ultimate quest (but never the ultimate…), where they try to make sense of their existence, and construct it.

By: Jeff Podoshen

Jeff Podoshen — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 00:33:02 +0000

>Maybe as academics we often forget the relief and joy that >seemingly trivial consumption pursuits provide to many >people.

Isn’t that just so weird?!