A Damn Good Rant What we have become..

[undergroundpanther]

Children of the landfill

When it comes to such oblivious pursuit after senseless commerce, the sheer turnover of goods and consumption as happiness, we cannot blame the Devil's hickey entirely on capitalism. America was not even a capitalist country during its early years, yet people still chased the same illusions. By 1848 we seem to have had the disease. Alexis de Tocqueville -- that damned guy holds up well, doesn't he! -- observed that Americans seemed to live for the chase after transactions, after change, consistently throwing away satisfaction in the process:

In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men, placed in circumstances the happiest to be found in the world; yet it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung on their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad even in their pleasures. Maybe it's the price you pay for living in a society based round not happiness per se, but its pursuit.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville

Toqueville pointed out that Americans no more than got a nice family home built, than we turned around an immediately sold it for no apparent reason, other than the joy of the transaction. Then they were off to pursue some other transaction. I cannot help but think about the house I am trying to sell right now, the fifth one I have owned and sold. It was all so unnecessarily wasteful and destructive of creativity and thought in every way, the home owning lifestyle being what it is (you never own it, just rent it from our monolithic extractive financial system.) In any case, we seem to have found what we were pursuing -- the anesthetic of consumer capitalism. Lots of transactions, lots of goods, with the directions for pursuit televised so we don't even have to get off the couch -- just lie there and watch house hunting shows and lifestyle shows on Home and Garden Television, which are classified as "education/learning" by the rating system.

The couch is a reasonable place to be these days, given that there is no real work left in America for sane functioning human beings. There is just survival (although the upper 20% of Americans safely isolated from the perspiring classes seem to think they are thriving because they more resemble the people pictured in slick lifestyle advertisements than most people. But it is still just a more elaborate form of survival amid the pointless and thin joy of consumerism, and the inherent material and spiritual wastefulness of life in here in the designated global landfill of that next rising empire, China. We are nowhere near rich, we are just conditioned to buy and throw away more expensive stuff. Not that we are entirely alone; Western Europeans are about a gnat's ass behind us in our wretched consumer excesses.


http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/01/dispatch_from_t.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. I just got...

A scanner and a printer, both work. They are just fine. Someone was going to throw them away. Really. I have other stuff like that. Nice stuff that people were throwing away.

Fine, I'll take it.

My brother has worked on several movies in NYC, which necessitated him going to work at 3AM. He said that at that hour, there would be full living room and bedroom sets, some of them leather, in new condition, thrown out onto the street because the people just got new stuff. Full computer systems. All sorts of stuff, good as new and expensive.

Madness.

[bumblebee1]

2. I remember when we first moved to Lancaster.

We had two gas grills. My husband wanted to give away one. He put it out in front of our house with a sign. About five minutes later, one of our neighbors came to ask about the grill. It was a good grill, but we had too many. The day before, her sister-in-law's grill ceased to work. We told her she could have it. She wanted to ask her sister-in-law about it first. I hope whoever has it was able to get some good use from it.

[Mnemosyne]

3. I've always tried to teach my daughter the difference between

a want and a need; someday it may sink in. :) I've often argued that many of the mainstream churches promote Satanism more than Christianity. A spiritual "God" certainly wouldn't give someone a hot tub because they are so good, but some do actually believe such crap. The more they can consume; the better their "God"/Corporate Masters love them.

One told me that I am poor and disabled because I'm not filled with the Holy Spirit and would receive earthly rewards also if filled. Ugh. Such ignorance and cruelty.

Too many people that determine their and others "value" in this world based on possessions and appearances. Truly sad.

Good rant UGP. Thanks for sharing!

[Sadie5]

4. I have seen this more than once

A family builds a new house and lives there a few years then builds another bigger and better home when they can barely make ends meet where they are. The same with furniture etc. Most of their daily living expenses goes on CCs anyway. Then they wonder where they went wrong.