If the answer to any of the above questions is readily available to you, then you may need to rethink it a little. Before answering the question, clearly understand the impact of your belief.
I met a fat girl today. It seemed obvious to me that she was trying to throw herself at me, but I was having an extremely difficult time coming over my fear of forming a relationship with a fat person. Is this a byproduct of my consumerism?
I met an alien today. He came down from the mothership and touched me on the forehead. That's why I was late for class today. I don't remember suffering from insomnia... yeah, I'm pretty sure it was an alien. When he touched me on the forehead I knew that everything was going to be okay.
Your purpose on planet earth… Damn. What a thing to think about. Because ultimately, when you get past the politics of it, that is to step away from McCarthy and Chaplin for a moment, and get on down to the philosophy of the thing, everyone is really asking the same question. “To what do I owe the great pleasure of my life itself? And how do I live my life accordingly?”
According to the Catholic church, the answer to this question is floating in the wind. It is in everything around us, because all of the beautiful things in life are proof that he exists.
But what if my exigent circumstances were that I had not grown up a good lil’ Irish boy in America? That instead, I had grown up in one of the many former Communist Bloc nations of the world; Russia, China, Cuba, or Mongolia? I would probably not be so inclined to this Yankee / Sinn Fein individualist philosophy. I would be more aligned, most likely, with a subverted version of Marxism.
A girl I know does not believe in Jesus Christ, or God. She considers herself independent of all notions of authority in her life. I doubt, though, that she has read enough literature in her life to ever have even seen the word “transcendentalist” written down. I don’t think she even knows what it means. The only reason that she considers herself an independent is through fear. She is afraid of my father and of my mother, afraid of the churches that she was dragged through as a teen. She is afraid of the fact that entire civilizations have been baptized simply because they have been told that it is the right thing to do. She is afraid of priests being accused of assault. The only things that she finds in the church are things that scare her. This very fear became a great factor in my sister’s rebellion as a teenager. So she began doing all of the very things that people consider sin. She shoplifted, smoked marijuana, drank alcohol, and did a plethora of other things to sustain her prostituted mind. And so she went down that road, having to live that cyclical life, and in so doing, she became a slave to the system. She’s much better off now-days. She got cleaned up, got married, had a kid, got divorced, got another boyfriend, and now works a steady job. She has a steady lifestyle, and she lives a very good life. She has a young son going through primary education, and a great guy to go home to. And yet. She has let her life become defined by fear. It seems that she, in her great push to become independent, has become a slave to modern American consumerism, something that to me would be a far greater threat to my sanctity then to serve a false idol.
But this is not Fan Shen on what is the definition of individualism. It is not Ralph Waldo Emerson on what is society. Or Thoreau on what is communication. It is not even Sun Tzu on what is within the violent mind. It is me, on what is consumerism.
Most people who wade through the bullshit that is the bloggosphere on the daily would start off their post by talking about iPods or Kindles or Coleman Barbeques and how they have changed the society that we live in today. A good patriot would even mention that American Standard is the only standard for urinals and toilet bowls across large campuses. Radical dude, because I totally needed to know how your shit doesn’t stink.
I’m an old-fashioned type of guy. I hate blogs. I hate twitter and facebook and omegle. I hate the fact that humanity is being reduced to a bunch of mindless consumer needledicks by the admission of its own majority. It’s like that scene in Star Wars where the Council of the Federation votes to turn the Galaxy into the first Galactic Empire. The princess turns around and says something along the lines of “that’s how it happens. Through applause.” And you can see the hundreds of consumerist senators all clapping away, oblivious to their own future demise in front of this man in the black turtleneck and the wire-rimmed glasses named Dark Jobbs. The emperor can see a future where the dark side rules the galaxy, just like Apple now runs the earth.
Individualism begets consumerism. Capitalism begets individualism. Communism begets capitalism. Consumerism begets anarchy. Anarchy begets martial law. Martial law begets revolution. Red fish, blue fish. Donkeys and elephants arise from the ashes of civil war and call themselves independent. And somewhere in there, a bear shits in the woods, and the Pope… is still the Pope.
As long as all men are equal, and they are accorded their own sense of rugged individualism, everything’s fine. Until then, we are going to have to deal with other people. Women and republicans are good places to start. Everything else will fall into place later. Hip hop ain’t dead yet.
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