One step inside

Materialism is the plight of the masses--the apotheosis of Americana. We as First World Children are bred to consume and to have two cars in every garage and be able to have water flowing through our pipes and electricity flowing through our houses. What some villages have in the ones and twosies we have by the millions.

I first realized this when I read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, where a missionary family moves to the Congo and their American lifestyle and the American things they brought dissipate. We are gifted by profit and chain stores and cursed by the same sword. Our consumerism seems to have a takehold on us, and it has since Post-WWII. It seems as if we cannot remedy this since it is so engrained in our thinking. The hippies tried to fight it and I am trying to fight it now. One less shirt I buy is one more statement--one less brand I wear is one more statement. Maybe this is why I felt so ashamed when I got my new car--since I knew there were others out there who had no such luck, no such mind for such a thing.
For some aberrant reason, this may sound pious, or condescending, but it's the truth... For America to prosper it needs to regress, allow for clothes to fade and assimilate to our bodies. Allow for our materialism and our Television and our technology to not sink into our thinking or allow us to stop thinking... To not allow their plights and their spelling and grammar checks to be superimposed upon our writings... we as a nation, as a generation, as friends, must rise up against that which makes us American--that which makes us inhuman.