Editor,
It is with increased dismay that I witness our culture sliding under the shadow of complete corporate occupation. People are no longer individuals. Instead, they are classified as consumers, a means to profits.
The recent installation of televisions in the SUB to show mtvU highlights the pervasiveness of the corporate complex that now seeks to exert complete dominance over our lives. We have been sold as commodities to a company intending to break the coveted 18-to-25-year-old demographic.
Welcome to the corporatization of America. How long before our University's name includes the phrases, "Sponsored by McDonald's, under license from Wal-Mart"?
Corporate entities and big businesses bent on profits have become the new hegemony of our society. At what cost is the future being bought? Will we be transformed into a servile society, bent and twisted unconsciously to serve the bidding of a few elite for the benefit of their stockholders? Will our culture disintegrate even further, to the point that any thought contrary to the system will be considered as quaint as those who rallied for peace in the 1960s? Or even worse, will every action that does not serve the corporate complex be seen as treasonous?
Whenever I see mtvU being piped into this institute of higher learning, I pity those who watch instead of paying attention to the living, breathing, intelligent people sitting across from them. Why are we training students to be the next generation of consumers, whose job skills will be limited to doing whatever they're told, as opposed to a generation that embraces freedom and independence from the machinations of corporations?
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At least at home I have the choice to turn off my television.
John Paul Gonzales
UNM student
