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Consumer culture

Last night I was dreaming about Christmas shopping, just sort of taking in the orgy of spending on things that happens this time of year every year, and the Doors song “My Wild Love” kept going through my head.

Think about your own childhood.  Are some of the strongest affects not related to things and not people?  Think Rosebud, who encapsulated a lost innocence in Citizen Kane (Cane?  I’m not going to look it up).  I think back to a Rat Patrol lunchbox I had when I was a kid, my first.  I didn’t know what Rat Patrol was, but I liked the jeeps with the machine guns.

Or candy.  Think back to the candies you used to eat.  Extend the sensation, and see what else is around you, what memories, long hidden, come up.

We live in a world in which the transient and frivolous characterizes most of our most important emotional moments.  The more you connect with people, the less stuff you need.  Conversely, the more alienated you feel, the more objects come to serve the role of nurturing.

“My wild love”‘s lyrics are irrelevant.  What matters is the sense of a Indian chant, of a ritual, of a communal connection.  I think my intuition was trying to grant me a clear juxtaposition.

And to the point, many tribes accused the white man of being like locusts, consuming everything in front of them.  To a great extent, this is true.  Just look out your window and imagine what it looked like 200 years ago.  For most of us, that is a very different picture.

We need cultural reform.  The Socialists want to kill our souls and put us in boxes.  This is not needed, not for human survival, not for cultural survival.

In these pages, I have proposed what I feel strongly are workable solutions to ALL our problems-spiritual, scientific, political, economic.  ALL our problems can be solved well, in ways which promote ecological sustainability, generalized well being, and happiness.