Black Friday
So the annual glut fest begins in earnest, as if we weren’t gorging enough with Christmas, we now have the cultural imposition of another Americanism, Black Friday, where you get to see humanity reduced by the brainwashing of the media and the capitalist system into a spending frenzy, buying stuff they don’t need and if they really sat down and thought about it, would realise they probably don’t want either.
It kills me to see human beings brought down into acting like rats fighting over the scraps from the bin, and for what? A bargain buy, another piece of stuff to fill the house with, as if we didn’t have enough already. At the end of the day, are you really any happier with the latest iPhone, has the quality of your life suddenly improved because you can now download your apps a little quicker? (I don’t even know if that’s correct, I have a very basic mobile, I don’t have an app to my name) It’s heart-breaking to see how many people fall time and again for all this nonsense, it seems as if the whole world is brain-dead. When did we all become fashion victims? When did we stop thinking for ourselves? Are we all so desperate to feel ‘accepted’ that we have to follow like sheep to the next ‘big thing’. Social acceptance is like a cancer in our minds, and who are we all trying to impress?
Why does anyone give a damn what anyone thinks about them? No one else is living your life but you, so why does some stranger’s opinion matter? And really, if you need certain stuff to fit in with whoever, maybe you should re-think who your friends are and start connecting with people who accept you for who you are, preferably without the need for all the stuff!
Because that’s what this is all about, the judgement of others. There was never a time when human beings were subjected to the ‘tyranny’ of public opinion more so than they are now. We watch week in and week out, programmes like the X Factor and those crap shows Channel 4 specialises in about people on benefits. Watching the news tonight, didn’t the media just love it, watching the scraps for crap! They point the finger in condemnation, like the Tories and their self-righteous pillaring of the poor and unemployed. Let the self-righteous point the finger when they haven’t been party to encouraging the whole sorry spectacle to begin with.
Immediately after the news story on Black Friday was an item about Ebola in Sierra Leone, here is a country in crisis and people living in the most appalling poverty. We have so much here and still we’re brain-washed into wanting more, more, more!
If we are into adopting Americanisms, then let’s try this one, let’s adopt the habits of the original Americans, let’s take only what we need from the earth, let’s re-build our communities (tribes) and look out for each other, let’s take care of our people and our environment and let’s stop with the competition. Instead of working to out-do each other, let’s work together and support each other and let’s work to make sure that every human being has access to the things that really matter, like food, clean water, a decent and safe place to live, health care and education. Then maybe, at some point in the future if you really have to go shopping, you can go knowing that in your community, there isn’t a child or older person going without or feeling lonely or that out in the world, there isn’t another human being sleeping on the streets or dying from the want of some of the basics in life that we all take for granted.