Fab day yesterday. Here we are after eating pancakes at a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Then on to Aquatica, a new water park in Orlando. I love those Bubba Tub rides where you go down water slides in a raft. After that, we went to Walmart, our fave place to shop in the US. Later that day, Katie and I went for a manicure/pedicure combo then home to watch trashy TV and play card games. (I found some cute Christian cards so instead of playing Old Maid, we played Find an Angel, but we changed the rules so ending up with the angel meant you lost.)
I could see how fun it would be to live in America if you had loads of money and could just indulge yourself shopping and spending money on having fun.
But then I read about a documentary called What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire, that "concludes that industrial civilization -- and its end product, consumerism -- has disconnected us from nature, the cycle of life, our communities, our families and, ultimately, ourselves. This unnatural, inorganic, materialistic way of living, coupled with a marked sharp decline in society's moral and ethical standards -- what the French call anomie -- has created a kind of pathology that produces pain and emptiness, for which addictive behavior becomes the primary symptom and consumption the preferred drug of choice."
"What most of us experience when it comes to addiction," says producer Sally Erickson, "is a pattern of continually seeking more of what it is we don't really want and, therefore, never being fully satisfied. And as long as we are never satisfied, we continue to seek more, while our real needs are never being met."
Comments?
3 comments:
Well, if Sally Erickson ever gets the public's attention, KRYSTAL will be out of business! Do you know, when I stopped eating meat 15 years ago, the one thing I missed were those cheap little steamy burgers? Not filet mignon, not pate' de foie gras, not steak tartare or chateaubriand---nope, KRYSTALS were the addiction I lay awake at night fighting.
But about that consumerism. I do agree. One of my favorite quotes is from *Little House on the Prairie* (or one of the books in that series) when Ma says, during a hard winter when Pa hadn't killed much meat, "Enough is as good as a feast." That makes so much sense---I mean, once you have "enough," why do you need more? (Krystals being the one exception:):)
My job is writing articles about rich people's fancy houses, so I'm kind of on the front line witnessing that consumerism gone mad. Wine cellars as big as the Pentagon! Twelve thousand square feet of Palladian splendor, every nook crammed with priceless antiques---for a family of four. Walk-in closets bigger than my bedroom, choc-a-bloc with 500 pairs of shoes and yards of dresses. Bathrooms like European spas. People always ask me if I get "jealous" after touring/describing these chateaux, and I can honestly say, no. It just all seems like a lot of trouble!
P.S....about living in America being fun if one were rich: I think that's true of any vacation destination, the world over. When I go to New York (and squat rent-free in LE's cousin's apartment on Sutton Place) I always think, oh, I could love living the NY life every day...then I remember that, if I really had to pay rent up there, I'd probably need a fairly good job, which would significantly squash the pleasures of everyday city life (or at least reduce the available hours for such pleasures)and make me miserable. So, in a twisted sort of way, living in America's poorest state has worked out well for me! One's little dollar goes a lot further here...
The funny thing is, everyone would agree about consumerism gone too far, "enough is as good as a feast" (one of my grandmother's sayings too) and not aspiring to lifestyles of extreme wealth. Somehow, I can't imagine anyone saying "What I aspire to is a life of consumer excess".
Trouble is, few of us practice what we preach. We don't look enviously at the out-of-sight-rich but we do compare ourselves to our slightly better-off acquaintances. All we want is what they have - a car as good as theirs, a house as big as theirs and we stretch to pay the fees at the the same schools their kids go to.
And as everyone knows someone slightly better off than they are, the whole of society is caught in a consumerist spiral.
I, too, imagine I aspire only to a simple life where my basic needs are met, then I look at what I actually have and feel somewhat hypocritical.
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