Waking up to a wasteland

I recently went to IKEA to get one specific thing and walked out with...one specific thing.

It was a cutlery tray for the top drawer in my kitchen which is being renovated. I walked in through the maze they take people though to ensure they have every opportunity to see what's on offer (and so IKEA can market to them), and ended up at the part where all the kitchen items are where I picked up my item and walked out. _{^{Ok, I didn't really walk out, I went to the cafeteria and had Swedish meatballs for lunch. I could have gone somewhere else for the cutlery tray but was driving by IKEA and figured it was a perfect excuse to get Swedish meatballs at the same time. Mission accomplished.}}

While there, I spent time observing people like always; I find it fascinating, frightening, and advantageous to understand people and human nature better and people watching is a good way to see them at their best and worst. What did I see? well, nothing unexpected, just a bunch of people working as hard as possible to convince themselves they needed what they were buying; par for the course. I get it, it feels nice to buy things even if people don't need them, as it releases endorphins or some such thing, but...what's the cost?

I drove away thinking about what I'd seen and thought of a Netflix documentary I recently watched called Buy Now which talks about the tricks corporations and marketers use to make people buy and to keep people buying and delves into some confronting truths about the excess of consumerism and the implications and, of course, humanity plays along like the sheep they are. Because I think it's important, I wanted to share the YouTube link to the official trailer for the Netflix documentary Buy Now and suggest that if you have access to Netflix you take a look because it might just get you thinking differently.

_{I also want to share a link to this recent post by @acesontop which I thought was both relevant and poignant: see it here. It's not exactly along the same lines as my point as per this post, but it runs parallel and I think it's worth a look and some thought.}

It's really easy to drift through life oblivious to what's going on around us like most people sheeple do and it's easy to say things like, "we're on the right track", because it's easier for the individual that way; certainly easier than the truth.

Seeing the wars and conflicts (reasons for them), the governmental and corporate greed and misbehaviour, the destruction of our environment and planet with no real mitigating measures, the damage woke agendas are doing, social media, AI and other such things, the breakdown of the family unit, manners and basic (positive) human values...seeing all those things isn't nice so people shut their eyes and by that I mean blind themselves with social media, excessive consumerism and other such feel-good things. People hail cunts like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, companies like Apple, the pharmaceuticals and so on as pioneers and visionaries because that's the agenda they're fed rather than delving a little deeper and seeing what's right there in front of their eyes.

I wonder when people will wake up, if at all. I wonder how many will watch the documentary and feel ashamed, horrified and partly responsible. None maybe. I wonder if people will wake up before we're all waking up to a wasteland.