“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Throughout human history, the measure of mental health has been the standards of society. If you question society, your mental well being is immediately bought into question, along with your ulterior motives. Surely the seething mass of conscience cant be wrong, and to question it is an open declaration of your outsider status. To say that society is sick, or not healthy, puts you into a box people like to place things out of place. Such as metal on a farm in Roswell, to fossilised human femurs the size of todays men. The box is called “Does-Not-Fit-In-With-My-Place-In-This-World” and a huge “IGNORE” stamp is placed on it.
Yet today, we do live in a society where almost every normal, well adjusted person is addicted to consumerism. Believing happiness arrives in a UPS package, these “normal” people spend their life on stuff. Not human interaction, or the beauty in the world, but the thought of getting new and shiny stuff. I know I am the last person in this world to preach about the addiction to consumerism, as I myself, am constantly wanting the new, the best, the inaccessible. As Dylan Moran, a popular stand up comedian, states “The ultimate human shopping list: I’d like some illegal, some forbidden, some frowned upon and some downright disgust, please. I’ll have that to go, thank you!”
Look at what the addiction to consumerism does to us. We are born to go to school to get jobs to fund this addiction. This is the society we live in now. You are frowned upon if you do not have a job, pay your taxes, want to get married, have kids, pay insurance, send your kids to school so that they may rinse and repeat your life, with new shiny things you never had. Thats it. That is every ones existence. Society forces each of us to fit in the mould and if we don’t they have special hospitals for us. Doctors in white lab coats will study you and tell everyone you are insane. What if you were the one sane person left? The only one to get it right in the past 2000 years? What if you reject this reality that is forced upon you? Will you be a happier person?
A test of this is to go through a “No-buy week”. For a full 7 days, do not spend money. Do not entertain yourself with going to a mall, the shops, the movies, out to dinner, coffee, whatever requires money to be spent. Deny yourself the “luxury” of having to spend money. After this week, reassess the week you just had. Was it good, fun, different? If it was different, make a note of what was different and how it was. You might find you cant live without spending money. You might find you can. You might find unexpected joys in the idea of not spending money, such as more time to yourself and your family or friends. As one testimonial states “My family and I were sitting on the beach, watching the sun set. The past few days had been absolutely wonderful with all of us becoming more close as a family. When the sun had set, only then did I realise it was December 25th and there were no gifts from or to anyone. Instead of this as a bad thing, it was the best Christmas we have ever had. No stress from shopping and pressure to get the perfect gift meant that we had a fantastic family holiday and after all, aren’t holidays meant for family? From now on, no more Christmas shopping for us thanks.”
If you want more reading on this then go HERE
I suggest you try out the no buying week, or some people have taken it as far as a no-buy month. I will try it, and let you know how it goes.
In the mean time, to prove to you humanity should be declared insane, here is George Carlin speaking about stuff.
