Consumerism

The question on our mind is this – is consumerism fading, even a bit?  Is it possible that this weird infatuation that we Americans have with gathering gobs of useless, shiny objects with only passing faddish interest and utility beginning to wear thin?  Could it be that those who have chosen (remember in a consumer dominated society the false promise of choice will always prevail) to supplant family, God, religion, morals, discipline and selflessness with shinny objects are coming around to the thinking that they have been pursuing empty endeavors of hope and change?

As usual we don’t know but we do see the early signs of something.  Here are the early signs we see:

·         Massive visual and noisy sound based poundings of messages telling us to buy, buy, buy packaged as if the act of buying, buying, buying will somehow make us young, good looking, surrounded by gobs of similar looking young, good looking people who admire us as we admire them and we are beginning to grasp that it is all baloney, and

·         An entire generation or two of politicians and government bureaucrats who simply don’t have a clue about all that they claim to be so well informed about, and

·         Too many people pursuing too many frivolous, needless, useless activities that are just what they appear to be – time consuming wastes of time, and

·         Time is so brief for all of us that it makes no sense to waste it on shiny objects produced in foreign lands and empty activities promoted by beer companies, soda companies, fast food companies, erection enhancing pill companies and all sorts of other costly products and services that do not bring an ounce of the joy that comes from holding a baby; chatting with a granddaughter; tossing a ball back and forth with a son or a grandson or simply reading a good book!

Nah – who’s kidding whom.

We’re Americans.  We like to buy crap; use it for a day or two and then toss it in the garage or a closet until we can’t fit anything else in so we go out and rent a storage space.  When we’re not doing that we like to sit in front of the TV set, eating and drinking the crap advertised on the show we are watching even though we just watched the same thing yesterday.  We particularly like to watch commercials of young good looking people doing things even though we are too fat to do the things that they are doing.

Buy, buy, buy.  That’s what life is all about.  For a minute there we thought we saw something changing but no, we were wrong.