According to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, commodities available for consumption are not inherently negative things. Baudrillard tried to interpret consumption in modern societies by engaging with the ’cargo myth’ prevalent among the indigenous Melanesian people living in the South Pacific. The Melanesians did not know what aeroplanes were. However,they saw that these winged entities descended from the air for white people and appeared to make them happy. They also noted that aeroplanes never descended for the Melanesian people. The Melanesian natives noted that the white people had placed objects similar to the aeroplane on the ground. They concluded that these objects were attracting the aeroplanes in the air and bringing them to the ground. Through a magical process, the aeroplanes were bringing plenty to the white people and making them happy. The Melanesian people concluded that they would need to place objects that simulated the aeroplane on the ground and attract them from the air. Baudrillard believes that the cargo myth holds an important analogy for the ways in which consumers engage with objects of consumption.
According to Baudrillard, the modern consumer ”sets in place a whole array of sham objects, of characteristic signs of happiness, and then waits for happiness to alight”. For instance, modern consumers believe that they will get happiness if they buy the latest available version of a mobile phone or automobile. However, consumption does not usually lead to happiness. While consumers should ideally be blaming their heightened expectations for their lack of happiness, they blame the commodity instead.
They feel that they should have waited for the next version of a mobile phone or automobile before buying the one they did. The version they bought is somehow inferior and therefore cannot make them happy. Baudrillard argues that consumers have replaced ’real’ happiness with ’signs’ of happiness. This results in the endless deferment of the arrival of total happiness. In Baudrillard’s words, ”in everyday practice, the blessings of consumption are not experienced as resulting from work or from a production process; they are experienced as a miracle”. Modern consumers view consumption in the same magical way as the Melanesian people viewed the aeroplanes in the cargo myth. Television commercials also present objects of consumption as miracles. As a result, commodities appear to be distanced from the social processes which lead to their production. In effect, objects of consumption are divorced from the reality which produces them.
Why are consumers unhappy with commodities that they have just bought?
Show Hint
- Because television commercials do not create enough hype about commodities.
- Because they have exaggerated expectations of commodities.
- Because the Law of Diminishing Marginal Commodities comes into play.
- Because they focus on improved functionality of commodities.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
This question asks for the reason behind consumer dissatisfaction with their purchases, according to Baudrillard's argument in the passage.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
The third paragraph explicitly addresses this: "However, consumption does not usually lead to happiness. While consumers should ideally be blaming their heightened expectations for their lack of happiness, they blame the commodity instead." This directly states that the cause of unhappiness is their "heightened expectations," which is synonymous with "exaggerated expectations."
Step 3: Final Answer:
Consumers are unhappy with commodities they have just bought because they have exaggerated expectations of commodities.
Which of the following is an argument made by Baudrillard?
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- Production and consumption are magical processes.
- Consumers value signs more than the real.
- Melanesian people coped with the inequality of colonialism by creating myths.
- Television commercials are at the heart of unhappiness experienced by consumers.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
This question requires identifying a central argument of Baudrillard's theory as presented in the text.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
The fourth paragraph contains a key argument: "Baudrillard argues that consumers have replaced 'real' happiness with 'signs' of happiness." This directly supports option (2), which states that consumers value signs more than the real. The "signs" are the commodities they buy, which they believe will bring happiness, but the "real" happiness never arrives.
Option (1) misinterprets the passage; Baudrillard argues consumers *experience* consumption as magical, not that it *is* magical. Option (3) is an interpretation of the cargo myth's origin but not Baudrillard's central argument about modern consumption. Option (4) is a contributing factor, but the core argument is the replacement of the real with signs.
Step 3: Final Answer:
An argument made by Baudrillard is that consumers value signs more than the real.
How can consumption be made more satisfying?
Show Hint
- By banning television commercials that promise real happiness.
- By understanding the connection between production and consumption.
- By recognising that commodities produce miraculous change.
- By rejecting colonialism and all other forms of economic oppression.
The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
This question asks for the implied solution to the problem of unsatisfying consumption, based on Baudrillard's critique.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
The final paragraph highlights the core problem: "commodities appear to be distanced from the social processes which lead to their production. In effect, objects of consumption are divorced from the reality which produces them." The dissatisfaction arises because consumption is seen as a "miracle," disconnected from the reality of work and production. The logical solution, therefore, is to bridge this gap. If the problem is the divorce between consumption and production, the solution is to understand their connection. This makes option (2) the most logical answer derived from the text.
Step 3: Final Answer:
Consumption can be made more satisfying by understanding the connection between production and consumption.
How does Baudrillard engage with the cargo myth?
Show Hint
- He uses it to describe the suffering of Indigenous people.
- He uses it to show that consumers should consume more serious objects.
- He uses it as a metaphor to critique modern consumption.
- He uses it to show that consumption is a blessing.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
The question asks about the purpose of introducing the "cargo myth" in Baudrillard's analysis.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
The second paragraph ends with a crucial sentence: "Baudrillard believes that the cargo myth holds an important analogy for the ways in which consumers engage with objects of consumption." The word "analogy" is a key indicator. An analogy is a comparison or metaphor used to explain or illustrate a point. The passage then explains how modern consumers, like the Melanesians, set up "sham objects" (signs) and wait for a "miracle" (happiness). Therefore, Baudrillard uses the myth as a metaphorical framework to understand and critique modern consumer behavior.
Step 3: Final Answer:
Baudrillard engages with the cargo myth by using it as a metaphor to critique modern consumption.
What is Baudrillard's position on total happiness?
Show Hint
- It comes with patience and waiting.
- It results from ethical consumption.
- It prioritises production over consumption.
- It is perpetually delayed.
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
The question asks to identify Baudrillard's view on the attainment of "total happiness" through consumption.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
The fourth paragraph provides a direct answer. It describes how consumers blame the commodity for their unhappiness and feel they should have waited for the next version. The paragraph concludes, "This results in the endless deferment of the arrival of total happiness." "Endless deferment" is synonymous with being "perpetually delayed."
Option (1) is incorrect because while consumers wait, happiness does not actually arrive. The other options are not supported by the text.
Step 3: Final Answer:
Baudrillard's position on total happiness is that it is perpetually delayed.
What is Baudrillard's position on consumption?
Show Hint
- It is a positive process.
- It is an egalitarian process.
- It is an irrational process.
- It is a utilitarian process.
The Correct Option is C
Solution and Explanation
This question asks for Baudrillard's overall characterization of modern consumption based on the passage.
Step 2: Detailed Explanation:
The entire passage describes consumption as a process based on a "magical" belief system, similar to the "cargo myth." Consumers engage with "sham objects" and wait for happiness "to alight." They view commodities as "miracles," divorced from the reality of their production. A process based on magic, miracles, and a fundamental misunderstanding of reality is, by definition, an irrational process. It is not based on logic or reason. The passage clearly shows consumption is not positive (it leads to unhappiness), not egalitarian (the myth starts from inequality), and not utilitarian (it's about signs, not utility).
Step 3: Final Answer:
Baudrillard's position on consumption is that it is an irrational process.
Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
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- Acrucial moderating factor in how people experience comparisons is self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to interpret upward comparison as informative rather than threatening. They are more resilient in the face of others’ success and more likely to believe they can reach their own goals. In contrast, people with low self-esteem are more prone to interpret comparison as judgment, reinforcing negative self-views and triggering feelings of inadequacy.
This dynamic creates a self-reinforcing loop. People with high self-esteem are less vulnerable to upward comparison, which intensifies those doubts. Those with a secure sense of self are more likely to use comparison as a learning tool. The same external stimulus—a colleague’s achievements, a friend’s popularity—can have radically different effects depending on internal stability.
Self-esteem also influences how people choose their comparison targets. Research has found that individuals often engage in “selective comparison,” seeking out those who confirm their existing beliefs about themselves. This can become a subtle form of self-sabotage. Someone who feels unworthy may subconsciously seek out targets that reinforce that sense, perpetuating a narrative of inferiority. One of the most promising antidotes to social comparison is temporal comparison—evaluating oneself not against others, but against one’s own past. This method has been shown to increase motivation and satisfaction, especially when individuals can see concrete progress. Temporal comparison activates the same reward circuits as social comparison but avoids the threat systems associated with social ranking. It also reinforces agency: individuals focus on what they can control and improve rather than what others control. In therapeutic and coaching settings, temporal comparison is used to help clients build self-efficacy and track growth over time.
Moreover, people who focus on self-improvement rather than social dominance are less likely to fall into cycles of envy or self-pity. They can still use others as inspiration, but they do so without attaching their self-worth to the outcome. This is not to say they never compare—but that they focus on learning, rather than judgment. The most skilful approach to comparison may lie in eliminating it, but in reframing it as feedback. When we interpret comparison as information rather than a verdict, we can ask, “What can I learn from this?” This shift turns comparison into a growth tool. Teachers mentor their students, not as rivals. Psychologists emphasize that the key variable here is mindset.
A fixed mindset sees comparison as a threat. If someone else is better, it means we are worse. A growth mindset sees comparison as a map. If someone else has reached a certain level, it means the path exists. This reframing is not just a cognitive trick. It changes the emotional tone of comparison, making it more likely to inspire than to wound. Reframing also requires emotional regulation—the ability to notice an initial pang of envy or shame without reacting impulsively. With practice, individuals can learn to pause, reflect, and reinterpret their emotional responses. Over time, this builds resilience and self-trust, allowing comparison to become a learning tool rather than a cage.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
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When people who are talking don’t share the same culture, knowledge, values, and assumptions, mutual understanding can be especially difficult. Such understanding is possible through the negotiation of meaning. To negotiate meaning with someone, you have to become aware of and respect both the differences in your backgrounds and when these differences are important. You need enough diversity of cultural and personal experience to be aware that divergent world views exist and what they might be like. You also need the flexibility in world view, and a generous tolerance for mistakes, as well as a talent for finding the right metaphor to communicate the relevant parts of unshared experiences or to highlight the shared experiences while demphasizing the others. Metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists, in large measure, of the ability to bend your world view and adjust the way you categorize your experiences. Problems of mutual understanding are not exotic; they arise in all extended conversations where understanding is important.
When it really counts, meaning is almost never communicated according to the CONDUIT metaphor, that is, where one person transmits a fixed, clear proposition to another by means of expressions in a common language, where both parties have all the relevant common knowledge, assumptions, values, etc. When the chips are down, meaning is negotiated: you slowly figure out what you have in common, what it is safe to talk about, how you can communicate unshared experience or create a shared vision. With enough flexibility in bending your world view and with luck and charity, you may achieve some mutual understanding.
Communication theories based on the CONDUIT metaphor turn from the pathetic to the evil when they are applied indiscriminately on a large scale, say, in government surveillance or computerized files. There, what is most crucial for real understanding is almost never included, and it is assumed that the words in the file have meaning in themselves—disembodied, objective, understandable meaning. When a society lives by the CONDUITmetaphor on a large scale, misunderstanding, persecution, and much worse are the likely products.- XAT - 2026
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Later, I realized that reviewing the history of nuclear physics served another purpose as well: It gave the lie to the naive belief that the physicists could have come together when nuclear fission was discovered (in Nazi Germany!) and agreed to keep the discovery a secret, thereby sparing humanity such a burden. No. Given the development of nuclear physics up to 1938, development that physicists throughout the world pursued in all innocence of any intention of finding the engine of a new weapon of mass destruction—only one of them, the remarkable Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, took that possibility seriously—the discovery of nuclear fission was inevitable. To stop it, you would have had to stop physics. If German scientists hadn’t made the discovery when they did, French, American, Russian, Italian, or Danish scientists would have done so, almost certainly within days or weeks. They were all working at the same cutting edge, trying to understand the strange results of a simple experiment bombarding uranium with neutrons. Here was no Faustian bargain, as movie directors and other naifs still find it intellectually challenging to imagine. Here was no evil machinery that the noble scientists might hide from the problems and the generals. To the contrary, there was a high insight into how the world works, an energetic reaction, older than the earth, that science had finally devised the instruments and arrangements to coart forth. “Make it seem inevitable,” Louis Pasteur used to advise his students when they prepared to write up their discoveries. But it was. To wish that it might have been ignored or suppressed is barbarous. “Knowledge,” Niels Bohr once noted, “is itself the basis for civilization.” You cannot have the one without the other; the one depends upon the other. Nor can you have only benevolent knowledge; the scientific method doesn’t filter for benevolence. Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, but always welcome. The earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. “It is a profound and necessary truth,” Robert Oppenheimer would say, “that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.”
...Bohr proposed once that the goal of science is not universal truth. Rather, he argued, the modest but relentless goal of science is “the gradual removal of prejudices.” The discovery that the earth revolves around the sun has gradually removed the prejudice that the earth is the center of the universe. The discovery of microbes is gradually removing the prejudice that disease is a punishment from God. The discovery of evolution is gradually removing the prejudice that Homo sapiens is a separate and special creation.- XAT - 2026
- Verbal and Logical Ability
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