Now?

The current socio-economic formation makes most of the goods available in the presence of a large number of liquid monetary assets, accordingly, the criterion of wealth is now the cornerstone for a hedonistic lifestyle. Now, the overwhelming part of the population is wage employees, and therefore, in order to increase their livelihoods linearly, they have to increase their working hours also linearly - so people make more effort every day to have a 'more hedonistic' rest after work. A person is ready to work 10 hours a day instead of 7, keeping in his head the thought that he will be able to rest on a trip to distant countries, and even there, while on holiday, he will constantly worry about money, thinking about how hard it was earned, or how many weeks he could have lived on this money if he had avoided this trip.

Semblant hedonism?

An individual does not study philosophy, he does not choose imperatives, he does not hold on to integral moral foundations and concepts - no, he is adaptive, he performs a lot of contradictory actions in one day, a ton of disconnected thoughts and considerations run through the mind.

The modern person is imposed on semblant hedonism. After all, a person does not achieve true freedom if he is constantly faced with the choice of exchanging his flesh, blood, and precious time for goods a person did not choose. Life is not hedonistic if the good is not freely available; the role of exchange itself plays a crucial role here.

An Imposed Good

A person does not enjoy the goods that he consumes. The capitalist type of production brought manufactories, replacing the workshops, and with it, brought a new characteristic of the economy. The economy has now acquired "marketability. " Mass goods now combine two characteristics - the formerly sole utilitarian characteristic and a new 'marketability,' which is symbolism. The media propagandize a way of life that people do not choose by imposing imaginary goods on them. A person consumes what the "society of consumption" has imposed on him with the idea that it will finally close the bottomless hole of his mere existence because he wants "to seem, not to be."

Advertisers create a product that no one needs, and having spent an unjustifiably enormous amount of resources to distribute it, they call it 'innovation.' The product is supposedly designed to facilitate the consumer's life and living, but in reality, it often complicates it.

A person goes into a shop and buys a soda and a candy bar, 10 minutes later lamenting the hard-earned money, repenting for the ill-considered purchase, for momentary weakness - because the person did not enjoy the goods, having consumed them to satisfy hunger, bodily and dopamine hunger. In doing so, he consumes 'blank' - sugar is not a wholesome food, while giving no 'real' pleasure, which comes only after doing the virtuous work. A person exchanges the most precious thing he possesses for imaginary empty things, which gave rise to the" society of consumption."

The Apotheosis of Semblant Hedonism - "Speak a Word About the King"

E-cigarettes, or vapes, are the pinnacle of what a society of pseudo-hedonism can imagine, with every component imbued with the symbolism of commodification.

Nicotine is a substance that replaces dopamine, giving us only imaginary pleasure for a very short period of time, being a real drug and the scourge of our society. A person spends huge amounts of money to get another dose of this tantalizing substance, falling further and further down the rabbit hole of addiction with each dose, which provides an increasing flow of profit to the manufacturers of the substance.

The battery is a component whose purpose is merely to provide energy for the device to vaporize the nicotine mixture. After the cycle of operation - it is a useless piece of rubbish, which cannot return useful properties without deep recycling, and getting into the ground - poisoning hectares of area with various toxins.

The casing - without further ado, a disposable plastic shell.