Disturbing On a Number of Levels

This headline bothers me a lot:

Wal-Mart worker dies after shoppers knock him down.

First of all, it disgusts me that our culture (yes, even the early morning “Black Friday shopping at Wal-Mart” culture is our culture) has fallen into consumerism so deeply that we become animals for a sale on plastic imported-from-China crap. It’s disgusting. There was a crush of people who were so out of individual control that they killed another person to gain first access to what they wanted. If they were hungry people, it would be a tragedy, but somewhat understandable. But they weren’t hungry. In fact based on my limited experience shopping at Wal-Mart, I would assume they were very well, and probably over-fed. This was a riot. Not a food riot, but a plastic, disposable, consumer-good riot.

Even though the first point is sufficient for this post, the more sinister second point is that because we’re (mostly) raional-acting beings, and because Wal-Mart is known for the lowest price-point on plastic crap from China, these people were rioting because they saw getting to that store’s supply of plastic crap from China as the only way to sustain their expectation of Christmas in a crashing economy. In other words, rather than attack the root of the problem by being disciplined this year and not spending money on crap, they’re doing whatever they can to maintain the very behaviors that got us in this mess – excessive consumerism.

This is exactly the same as burning food and ruining topsoil to maintain what Kunstler calls our “happy motoring society.” We grow corn (food) to make ethanol, in an effort to extend the life of the unsustainable auto-centric society, instead of banking the food and taking better care of the topsoil.

This is going to sound strange, but apart from any security responsibilities they may have dropped the ball on, I don’t blame Wal-Mart. They’re simply participating in the market and doing what they should do. I blame the culture we’ve created, the culture that will be our undoing. If we are to survive as a nation, we have to stop making shopping our national pastime, and start making things worth repairing, saving and working harder. We’re past the point of preserving our way of life, that’s a societal evolutionary dead-end.

Posted in Economy
Tags: Depression, Economy, Recession