Rampant Consumerism

Earlier I wrote about how I was trying not to buy every shiny thing that caught my interest. Here’s why.

Let’s say I come across a cool bike tool kit. Now, I can afford that. That. But something like this comes up every day. At the end of the week, I can’t really afford all of these things.

And I already have a nice bike tool kit. I don’t need another one. I should be using the things I have.

At some point I realized I already have everything I needed. The feeling that I don’t have to buy anything is unsettling in our society. If you’re not buying something, you’re unamerican.

There’s also this: it never ends. It never, ever ends. If I bought the tool kit today, there’d be something else tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. It will never stop. This is how people get into trouble with credit cards. They cannot keep up, but it’s impossible to keep up. So don’t. (The whole concept of “living within your means” appears to be a foreign one.)

And where am I going to put all of that stuff? When I started to think about this, I became aware of all the things I already had that were stuffed away somewhere, things I’d forgotten I even had. Those things were, once upon a time, shiny new things I had lusted after.

It’s pointless.

The next time I write about this sort of thing, I’ll write about buying things that last. With a detour through our disposable society.