One thing every single human shares is that when we are born all we desire is to live a free and unrestricted life. For some, that desire is a life-long pursuit, but for a large number of unfortunate souls, the yearning to be free is extinguished and replaced with a zombie-like need to shop.
Consumers must be trained, for they are surely not born. Our greed-based system takes tiny, naked blank slates birthed into an Earthly paradise, puts them through a mental meat grinder, then abandons them in the middle of a shopping mall of things we must be forced to want.
We are schooled, trained, propagandaed, drilled, and cajoled until the nugget of that desire for freedom and the natural world remains only as a vestigial shrivelled memory, and is replaced with the desire to shop till we drop.
This is not for our benefit. Consumerism is not good for anything, except the profits of the uber greedy wealthy elite. They have to keep us shopping... forever, or their reign will end.
"Never count the consumer out", they say, "for they will always find ways to spend more, even if they have to go further into debt."
They know that shoppers have been trained so well that they will spend their whole pay check every month, then borrow and spend more.
If they get a tax refund, they will go to the bank and save it. Jokes. You know what they will do - that's right - go shopping.
Get a credit card? Max it out. Inheritance, government stimulus check, cash gift from granny? Straight to the shopping mall in a futile attempt at buying happiness. We must learn that if some crap is bad, then more crap isn't any better.
Shopping as the reason for living is a reflex that we have learned since we were young and wild and free. By early childhood, our role as consumers already feels natural, but it isn't. It is the end of all things natural.
The gift the pandemic has given the world is the pause from shopping and spending money. May this be the beginning of the end of this destructive force that does nothing but put us in chains.
Now is the time to shake off the chains, escape the mall, and unlearn our consumer brainwashing. Surely by now we know deep down in that zombie shopper heart, that there is more to life than a never ending quest for more everything.
We are born free, but everywhere are found in shopping malls carrying around the baggage of our nature deficit disorder, to name only one negative effect of making buying stuff our number one concern.
Marketing, the propaganda branch of consumerism, spends over 1 trillion dollars a year to make sure that at least some of us will protest in the streets shouting for a return to the shopping malls where we can worship and tithe our billionaire masters.
That is known as Stockholm syndrome - coming to love those who have turned existence into a cheap, hollow and restricted version of what life can be when lived wild in our natural state.
Now is the time to choose freedom. Real, wild freedom, not just the freedom to have a "job" so we can shop till we drop.
That freedom can be found anywhere, in any setting, when one adopts simple living as an alternative to spending the rest of your life caught in the work/spend/borrow trap.
What does your ideal free, unrestricted simple life look like? If it can be imagined, it can be realized. Make simple your goal, work steadfastly toward it, and you can not help but achieve it.
In England it was announced yesterday that some of the large luxury shopping malls are going into administration. As the shops in them have not been able to afford the rent. Also a lot of big name stores are closing and sales selling off the last of their stock. High Streets are empty. I know this is a joy for simple living people but the sadness across England is horrendous. Thousands upon thousands of job losses due to this . The zombie shoppers will have nowhere to go. Soon in October the furlough money ends. The government has paid people’s wages so they can continue to shop. Encouraging us not to save. Risk the germ go out and spend. Benches have been removed to sit on. Stand que at a distance wear a mask and spend. I do feel sad at the oncoming recession what happens without shops? They are all we have ever known. Glad I am simple living but the shock waves will be felt for years to come.
ReplyDeleteI recently watched a documentary in which a family had to live as though it was every decade from the 1940s to the current day in the UK. It was based on a government survey in which thousands of people had recorded every cent they spent in those decades. This told the historians what people bought, and from that, how they spent their time. It was absolutely fascinating to see how the spending went from 'needs' like envelopes and shoe polish to 'wants' like electrical gizmos and 'leisure' goods like foot spas. The house was decorated for each era and it was incredible to see how it went from cosy, homey and uncluttered in the 1940s to incredibly cluttered in the 1990s. Clearly an insidious marketing program has been at work. The family also noted the change from being together as a family to all being on their own screens - what a lonely place!
ReplyDeleteMadeleine
A masterpiece
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