Conscious Consumerism

I personally enjoy the luxury of being able to purchase a Jumbo Jack at 3:30 am and the ability buy a fake Coach bag at a flea market. On the other hand, as a member of society that is on a rather limited income (see numerous previous posts or bank account statements), I am shocked at how much people are willing to spend for mere convenience. Are we really that lazy that we need someone to park our car for us at the mall, or pay to have our groceries delivered to us?

While I can respect and appreciate the time saving qualities of services, for example having your movie rentals mailed to you or prescriptions refilled online, I do have a problem with services the encourage our nation to become even more obese, self-centered, and nihilistic. We continue to devalue the importance of family and spirituality, while focusing on ingesting/digesting as much pop culture, fast food, and main stream media we can possibly get our hands on; all we care about anymore is consuming – not creating.

I am not saying stop eating fast food or stop reading People magazine (god knows I would never wish a fate so terrible as that upon my worst enemy) I just think it would be really great for America, and humankind in general, if we thought for just a few seconds before always picking the “easiest” or “most convenient” way to go about something. I think we would find that people might lose weight if they were forced to park their own cars at the mall, and maybe the elderly people who actually need to have their groceries delivered could have the service free of charge, instead of it being abused by the rich that have created a paying market for the service. We could probably have some meaningful global discourse if we were not constantly being bombarded by news programs’ scare tactics and biased views or afraid of voicing an opinion that may be deemed unpopular in some arenas.

Bottom line, something has to change or else we are all going to mindlessly eat our way into our own graves.