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Do what you're told

A computer company has recently begun an advertising campaign in which a series of beaming youth proudly proclaim, "I was born to turn my mind over to the Web! I was born to be an Internet junkie!" The ads certainly aren't meant to be taken literally - the Internet still is not among the leading reasons parents have children. At the same time, the ads are true, because they demonstrate how much of our individual identities are defined by the needs of business.

America is, we are told, the home of the free. We are free to speak our minds, go where we want when we want, and purchase what we want when and how we want. From our earliest moments, we are informed by our family, teachers, clergy and other peers that we are members of the greatest nation to have ever occupied the earth, one dedicated to the protection of individual freedom.

In those previous three sentences, some of you may have noticed a contradiction. We are free, but our recognition of that is based on our having been taught we are free. And most importantly, we are taught what it means to be free. We are told we are free and instructed on how to be free, therefore we are free.

Specifically, we are educated that freedom means participation in a capitalist society. One of the basic lessons of our grade school education was that, in America, everyone is free to make his or her way in the world in the manner he or she wants. But in reality, most of us will never work for ourselves or create what we want to create. We will work for another company that will tell us what work to perform, set the rates they pay us for labor, own the final product and sell it for more than it cost to make. In exchange, we receive wages or salaries that, in theory, allow us to pay our bills and live comfortably.

Our education continues into how we are supposed to spend the money we earn. Beginning in childhood, we are bombarded by advertisements telling us how incomplete our lives are and how they can be bettered by purchasing stuff. Our lives are bereft of meaning unless we purchase Pokemon, Nikes, a flat-screen TV, whatever. Our very identities are shaped by what we purchase and consume. If we do not consume, if we do not have the latest version of AOL, or the newest cell phone, we do not exist.

To prove we consume and exist, we are particularly drawn to products emblazoned with corporate logos. So proud are we of doing as we're told, we spend money for the right to be free advertising for Abercrombie and Fitch, Mossimo and MSNBC. Take a look around you on the mall next time and notice how everyone is wearing something with a corporate logo. Pay attention to how similar everyone looks. We express our freedom through not being individuals.

Of course, we can choose not to participate in this system. But we will certainly have a difficult time living because food, land and other resources are controlled by capitalist organizations. In what sense, then, do we actually have a choice? Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that we have two options before us: participate or starve.

Because we are told we are free, and because we have freedom defined for us, we are educated not to question the contradictions in the way we live our lives. We do what we're told - work, recreate, consume with a capitalist system - because that is how we understand ourselves as free. And if that means turning our minds over to the Internet or whatever other product or technology we need to consume in order to live in a free society, then so be it. In order to be free, we willingly lock ourselves into a specific, highly controlled mode of existence that privileges an economic system over real individuality and choice.

Perhaps, then, that which we are taught makes us free is exactly that which ensures we are not free.