![\"\"](\"https:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/blogger\/4804\/510\/1600\/Buddhist-Thanksgiving_.gif\")
<\/a>I received this from a friend a couple years ago for Thanksgiving. I\u2019ve been wanting to write about consumerism issues for a while and always find myself too spaced out and\/or inarticulate whenever I begin to think of them. I guess that considering Friday is to be the biggest shopping day of the year I might try to put down a few thoughts.<\/p>\n
First, I feel horribly trapped in this excessively consumerist society. I see people who are barely getting by taking out loans to buy a gas-guzzling \u201982 Camero or an unneeded truck or SUV. I see people doing quite well doing the same thing and then alternately 1) feeling sorry for the poor of our society and the world and 2) pointing fingers at those same people for their wastefulness. The whole thing is insane. And yet I\u2019m caught in it: flying around the nation and the world for school, vacation, and the rest; driving around town when I could walk or take the bus. I too am tainted by the ugly consumerism and rat race mentality which surrounds me.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t much care for holding up my good qualities in hope of praise or for pointing fingers myself. The problem is <\/span>systemic, but in our world we are<\/span> the system. How many great figures have said, simply, \u2018Be the change you wish to see in the world\u2019<\/span>? Oh how TRUE! But also how very difficult. Perhaps I just want too much <\/span>change, I swim not upstream, but against the current of a whole ocean.<\/p>\n My<\/span> Philosophy and Religion set such high standards. Yet my society sets the very lowest of standards: happy <\/span>is a new cologne, intelligence <\/span>is a new laptop, joy <\/span>is an iPod, health <\/span>is a low calorie beer. All of this I can have, easily. But it is all only a grandly orchestrated lie<\/span>. It is absurd, perhaps funny, yet nonetheless true <\/span>that the next 35 days will mark America\u2019s greatest surge of free market capitalism, unchecked consumerism and at the VERY SAME TIME our greatest period of abject depression, loneliness, alcoholism, overeating, and family feuds, our highest suicide rate; a boon not only to toy manufacturers and mom-and-pop store owners, but also to the makers of depressant liquors and antidepressant drugs.<\/p>\n What do we do, those of us who see the obvious absurdity of our modern \u2018holiday spirit\u2019? To reject it all is to turn our back on mom-and-pops, the very fabric of our society, but haven\u2019t we already abandoned them? Didn\u2019t we bid mom-and-pop adieu with a whisper and a wink when we broke ground on the new Wal-Marts and their box-store brethren? It\u2019s more convenient to buy everything under one roof, where prices are low and staff is underpaid. It\u2019s more convenient to peal off that \u2018Made in China\u2019 sticker before wrapping our Christmas gifts than to search for something made in the USA. Being a conscientious consumer is just too tiring. To buy locally, ethically manufactured goods just takes too long, and we can\u2019t buy half as much when all is said and done.<\/p>\n So, as a frustrated philosopher, I ask myself, \u201cwhy don\u2019t I just join in: shop, drink, fight it out, feel alone, pop some pills and vow, just before the clock strikes midnight, to change for the better in the new year?\u201d<\/p>\n I received this from a friend a couple years ago for Thanksgiving. I\u2019ve been wanting to write about consumerism issues for a while and always find myself too spaced out and\/or inarticulate whenever I begin to think of them. I guess that considering Friday is to be the biggest shopping day of the year I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n