Trapped in Wal-Mart!

Just imagine, one day walking into any Wal-mart,looking for and grabbing the nearest shopping cart and continually weaving and "whirling" through a maze of store aisles for up to an hour at a time. This culture jamming ritual is performed by activists of a organization known as "Whirl-Mart" which aims to mimic and mock what they perceive as the absurdity of the shopping process in today's society. The group calls their actions as "a collective reclamation of space that is otherwise only used for buying and selling". Like many other culture jamming groups, they wish to change the current culture of people buying into huge billion dollar company's and be freed of their ability to manipulate consumer's. In Lawrence Lessig novel, "Free Culture" he describes "A free culture has been in our past, but will only be our future if we can change the path we are on right now" (lessig, 14). By changing the path, Lessig states we can alter the way society is made. Lessig also goes on to state that if the type of culture we are currently living in continues there are immense consequences "The consequences is that we are less and less a free culture, more and more a permission culture" (Lessig,24). The definition of "permission culture" brings society into dangerous territory, as we can no longer make healthy decisions for ourselves, and permission is required. In the case of Whirl-Mart its tactics are effective as it is a silent protest and the message clearly gets across to society and its obsession with large grossing corporations such as wal-mart. Society's obsession with "buying" is shown in this process, and the message is clear, we spend hours upon hours shopping, this is non-productive at times, and further puts the money in the pockets of greedy corporations. Without us the consumers, stores like Wal-mart go out of business, and we are "free" once again.