Were consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things dont concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guys name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.. — Chuck Palahniuk “How much of our lives do we give up in order to sustain the consumeristic machine? Chances are you already know that a small percentage of Americans hold the vast amount of wealth, and that Americans use up an offensive amount of the worlds resources. Perhaps you have also noticed that despite the promises from the advertising industry, your new clothes, extra TV channels, jewelry, or living room décor don’t provide lasting happiness. Perhaps you’ve noticed that your job seems to suck the life out of you and when you get home you don’t have the energy to prepare dinner from scratch or engage in a lively discussion with your family; so you go out to eat and make chit-chat, then come home and sit in front of the TV until it’s time to go to bed. Your evenings don’t make you feel rested or rejuvenated and you aren’t sure what to do about it, so twice a year you fly to a beautiful destination that is guaranteed to get you out of your rut for a week or two. Unfortunately, the night before you return to your routine it’s as if the vacation never happened. Your only consolation is that there will be another vacation in half a year. I saw something today that introduced to me a new question: a claim that only 10% of the US economy actually supports meeting basic needs. I don’t know if this percentage is correct but regardless, the question it raises is startling: how much of this corporate, consumerism-driven rat race we’re on is driven not towards keeping a roof over our heads and providing three square meals a day, but towards things we don’t even need? I have certainly been asking myself how I can simplify my life; do with fewer things so that I have more time to enjoy what does provide meaningful, lasting fulfillment: spending time with people I love, being creative, using my muscles, or communing with nature. But now I wonder how much of our entire economic system, how many of our 2,080 work hours per year, fuel the illusion of happiness-through-consumption?” -Kjerstin Gould “It is from that position, a position outside the cultural operating system that we can begin to ask real questions about what it means to be human, what kind of circumstance are we caught in, and what kind of structures, if any, can we put in place to assuage the pain and accentuate the glory and the wonder that lurks waiting for us in this very narrow slice of time between the birth canal and the yawning grave.” -Terence Mckenna
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:39:09 +0000
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