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I was only fourteen when I took the proverbial red pill and saw the rat race and brainless consumerism for what it was and decided it was not for me, and a waste of time. Humanity has debated what the "meaning of life" is, or if even such a concept exists; rest assured, the meaning of life sure as hell isn't the mindless acquisition of wealth and material possessions to the detriment of everything else. That there are several things in life more important than mindless consuming and material possessions. That the definition of success can mean something other than having a bigger wallet and more material junk than the person standing next to you.
There is a family friend that occasionally shows up at family functions that I dread having to see (he knows my uncle via a business relationship). In short, he is a rigidly, un-apologetic pro-corporatist right-winger, and an unapologetic materialist and consumerist. He grew up in the materialistic yuppie generation of the 1980s, and it shows. Oddly enough, for as happy as he claims materialism and consumerism make people, he is probably one of the most bitter, disagreeable and unhappy people I have met in my entire life. He has been rather critical of religion on past occasions; but never because of its oppression of women, promotion of pseudoscience by fundamentalists of various faiths, or social conservatives attempting to erode U.S. separation of church and state. Instead, he is often critical of the notions of egalitarianism, social justice and asceticism found in most of the world's major religions; in his mind, all they do is interfere with his perverse notion of "success." He's in the upper echelon of the upper-middle-class but buys the nonsense that he will one day be rich himself, and implicitly looks down upon anybody below his social status. Unsurprisingly, this person is not married and does not have any children -- perhaps if he did, he'd realize how pointless consumerism is.
He's had a few "greatest hits" over the years. Once, at a family Christmas get-together, he railed against Charles Dickens' classic "A Christmas Carol." He claimed that the story had an "anti-wealth" theme and demonized people that were "successful." On more than one occasion, he has railed about Federal tax brackets and has even gone as far to suggest that progressive taxation is for "lazy people" and "welfare kings and queens" (well, at least he wasn't being sexist). In recent times, he's been rather critical of President Obama for being "thoroughly anti-wealthy." He's actually said that there's nothing wrong with taxpayer money being used to support the private ventures of the already well-off.
However, his biggest thing is his twisted definition of "success," which he constantly bloviates about. And at a family Memorial Day function when I was in eighth grade and about to move on to high school, he wanted to give me and my cousins a little diatribe about his warped consumerist ideology, and he hoped, brainwash him into his selfish system as well.
He started out his diatribe by saying that for young people like ourselves, that absolutely, positively, nothing was more important than school (while school is pretty important, anybody who thinks it's more important than anything has some pretty big issues). He bloviated that it was more important than happiness, friendship, our own families, a person's religious faith if they so had it, and even our own healthy development as human beings in a mental and physical sense. He immediately lost both me and my family members listening; like I mentioned earlier, we agreed that it was important, but not that important. He shot back with the only reason that it mattered at all had nothing to do with getting an education, becoming well-rounded citizens, or finding something that we enjoyed and could make a solid career out of; nope, the only reason it mattered was "getting ahead" in the rat race and "success." Continuing unabated over the objections of other people, he mentioned that in his mind, "success" was the only thing that mattered in life; and his definition of "success" was having lots of money and material possessions. Several other family members, my parents included, disagreed with what he had to say; but arguing with him was like talking to a brick wall. He suggested that my cousins and I, upon reaching college, should major in something that paid well instead of something that we were good at or enjoyed doing; because again, "success" was all that mattered. He basically mentioned that we ought to do "whatever it takes" to achieve his version of "success." When several people mentioned that success, after all, was pretty subjective -- he responded that getting rich and having lots of material possessions and money were what "mattered in a capitalist society" -- and then mentioned during his bloviation that anybody who disagreed should go live in a Communist country. A debate continued for a few minutes, but realizing that he was getting nowhere; finally stopped and started to talk about something else, as if he was trying to forget the whole episode.
As I digested all the nonsense I had heard, one profound thought came to my mind -- that there was certainly more to life than an addiction to material possessions and stuff; and that whatever the meaning of life was, it certainly wasn't to acquire as much wealth and as many material possessions as possible. My mind just kept on finding holes in his stupid rant. His "'success' at all costs" notion struck me as being rather immoral. Furthermore, success was subjective, not objective -- and that according to this guy, if one really had a passion for a particular career path, was good at it, was happy in it, but made little money doing it -- that was not success in his mind. That for somebody that was so certain that money could "buy happiness," yet seemed so miserable; and an aside -- over the years, I've noticed that most hardcore consumerists are very unhappy at their core. I thought about just how much his materialistic nonsense clashed with what I had been taught about in church at our social-justice oriented Lutheran church. I realized that, contrary to his rambling, there were reasons for school other than his mindless rat race. I also realized that there were so many things more important than consumerism, wealth, and material possessions. Your own health, for one -- what good is a mountain of stuff if you're unhealthy? Religious beliefs in those that hold them -- primarily because it is a common theme in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, so forth and so on -- that the mindless pursuit of wealth is bad and immoral. Happiness -- because you only get one life and it's too short to be obsessed about the rat race; and for somebody that seemed to extol the virtues of materialism so much, this guy seemed so miserable. Family and friends -- humans are social creatures, and our fellow man is more important than how big your checkbook or house is. While this was about 18 months prior 9/11 and 5 years prior Katrina (two events that showed at least some people the stupidity of consumerism and that some things mattered so much more), I remembered other tragedies such as the federal building bombing in Oklahoma and Hurricane Andrew in Florida; and that people could have cared less about their stuff; but they did care about that their friends and family if they survived, or grieved for them if they were killed. This guy tried to turn me into a consumerist -- and yet I saw how mindless and stupid it was.
What experiences did you have that turned you away from mindless consumerism and showed you how well, mindless and no good it was?
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