Fascinating text, really: http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/consumerangst.html Here are some common-sense suggestions to minimize the negative effects of consumerism in your life: * It is very likely that most of your dissatisfactions are a carefully engineered preparation for consumerism. So examine your dissatisfactions - keep only those that, if discarded, might kill you. Toss the rest. * The first rule of advertising: if it is advertised, it is not a necessity. So start out by saying "I don't need this product. Now, do I want it?" * Ask yourself how much of an advertisement appeals to reason, and how much appeals to emotion. If the primary appeal is to emotion, you should expect to feel another, stronger emotion after the purchase: disappointment. * Ask yourself if the advertisement describes a product, or instead describes you in unrealistic ways. After all, it is the real you that will be paying for the product, not the fantasy you that "deserves the very best." * Apply common sense to advertising. If you are being offered a book that is guaranteed to make you millions and costs $39.95, you should wonder why it didn't work for the author. Real millionaires don't promote get-rich-quick schemes on late-night TV unless the actual get-rich-quick scheme is to sell millions of copies of a worthless book. * Above all, recapture an appreciation for ordinary reality. Two reasons quickly come to mind: * Fields of flowers don't lie, and * If you postpone a walk in the flowers for long enough, the next time you check, they will be gone. In my view, if a person can't sit down in a forest, look between the trees at a sunlit meadow and say, "This is all I really need," then that person is more than slightly bent. But that's only my opinion - I could be wrong. -- ---> jab / commie "We listened, now we have complications" (Victims of Commie Association) http://commie.oy.com
