Rather than fill this page with drivel, I wanted to hit you with some quotes . . .
Well, there may be a little drivel at the bottom . . .
Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money. ~Author Unknown
You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy. ~Eric Hoffer
The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. ~Mad Magazine
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing. ~John Berger
To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year. ~Elwyn Brooks White
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. ~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
He who buys what he does not need steals from himself. ~Author Unknown
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice. ~Unknown
In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea. ~Richard Bach
Who covets more, is evermore a slave. ~Robert Herrick
The
gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought
to have - and that is a moral problem, not an economic one. ~Paul
Heyne
Let's clear one thing up right now - - I am materialistic - maybe not as much as some, but certainly as much as many. I have also written more about consumerism than any other topic, as I believe it has the biggest stranglehold on our society. You see, in reality, this world worships Mammon, and this Friday, "Black Friday" is Mammon's Xmas. All we, like sheep, Baa our way to the malls to buy what we are told to buy. I don't need a laptop, but I want one, and if I camp out at Wal-mart, I can get a hell of a deal on one. After all, who could turn down a $400 Pentium 4, 2 gig RAM, super whoppler doppler processor with intel inside? And I might as well get a 35" monitor while I am here, since my 24" is nearly 9 months old, and quite dusty . . .
Critics will say I have a huge TV and I buy PS3 games. Yes, its true. Guilty. And I hate myself for it. Small pleasures? Who would deny us these? Well no one. Life needs a little joy - but the PS3 has never fixed my life. Sure its a small escape. and one I have been thankful for, but in the long run, it will never bring me long term happiness.
I have stated before that having a few wants is ok, but the problem is, we can never stop. I recently bought a house, and so i painted throughout, and now I need new blinds to match the paint, and then I need new pillows to accent the blinds, so now I need a new throw to accent the pillows and then I need a new couch, and before you know it the entertainment center looks out of place and then I may as well get a blu-ray and since I have a new blu ray I better replace all my old VHS . . . .
SO - - Black Friday - its a day that embodies this mindset. A day where we can loudly, or silently, state our allegiance to an ideal. An ideal so radical that it seems foreign. I want more, but I don't need more - and even if just for today, I can win this battle against petty wants.
Then the next step is, embracing the spirit of xmas . . . .
which leads me to, I don't its ever a bad thing for someone to take advantage of your kindness
But I digress . . . as I always do . . .
