Shopping as Sheep-like Behavior

Having covered “fashion” in this earlier post it is time to move on to shopping, which is the corporation-preferred activity for any doofus that believes the fashion lie. As a brief review, it is the fashion lie which gets the less-than-logical consumer to throw away perfectly good clothes, cars, appliances, and so on, then to rush right out and buy new ones because the older ones were “out of fashion.”

We can check the silliness of this behavior in a thought experiment, if you would like. Let’s say you are walking down the street wearing a maroon tee shirt when a person walks up and says that you need to get rid of that tee shirt right away and get a new one in the new fashionable color, which is puce. Or perhaps, that person comes up to the window of your car and informs you that the manufacturer has restyled your model, so you must go (Today!) and trade it in on the new model. The odds are that you would do neither of these things. Yet, when the mistresses and masters of fashion tell you to do the same things for the same reasons, the sheep-like among you rush right out and do it.

The activity prompted by the mavens of fashion is known as “shopping.” Whether for a car, or for yet another pair of shoes, many people do this as a “fun” activity, having been convinced by the afore-mentioned mavens that they may be out of style, which is apparently more important to some people than being a good steward of the environment. So, instead of getting full use out of what they bought the last time they are easily convinced to “shop,” which means, in essence, that they go out and get a new whatever-it-is so that they can convince the other people in the low end of the gene pool that they are “cool.”

Thus it is that the fashion-conscious more-or-less constantly “shop” in order to hand the major corporations (the ones telling them to buy via advertising) lots and lots of money so that the corporate CEOs can laugh at the poor fools over drinks. In the course of so doing, “shoppers” place a greater and greater burden on the resources of the planet, doing their best to ruin the place for the rest of us.

Worse, they “shop” for whatever the teevee tells them buy, which is a lot. A big SUV when gasoline is at an all-time high price? “Sure, Mr. Television Man, I’ll run out and get me a new Navigator so I can be cool like you!” That’s a great way to make The Man richer, and an even better way to help prod the planet down the toilet, but these people are apparently not bright enough to see that driving that Navigator, or wearing that ugly pair of shoes that they didn’t need, just makes them look truly stupid.

If they were not ruining life for the rest of us, and for future generations (if any) by this ignorant behavior, I certainly would not care. After all, I don’t much care if they look stupid. But, unfortunately, the planet can only take so much over-consumption by the ignorant. That new BMW Z-car to shore up the erectilely dysfunctional fat middle aged idiot, or that new pair of shoes or jeans when you already have more than you can wear out in the next five years, are literally killing the human race. We are dying in your waste. All that you are saying with your consumptive behavior is that you really do think that it is all about you and the hell with everybody else.

Keep it up and your grandchildren will have no place to live.


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