The door opened and in they stepped and from the get-go, started their inspection and evaluation of the surroundings with a look of disdain on their face. The taste in colors was a handful of years old, the floor had some chips and dents, the painted walls a mark or three from a young child.
They continued inward and into the open plan kitchen and lounge and cast their judgmental eyes on all they saw. That old kettle had boiled far too many cups of tea, the vase of flowers neatly arranged on the dining table was cheap and unbranded, the couch looked a little too small and the monstrosity of a plasma TV was 14 years old, if it was a day.
After pointedly and loudly remarking on all of the things they could remove and all of the options they would fill the void with, they turned their attention to their host who had welcomed them inside their castle, their home.
That shirt, those pants and even the socks upon your feet are out of style and need to be replaced. You need a better haircut and a facial treatment for your aging skin. We recommend you get some exercise equipment, go to the cinema and eat at our expensive restaurant. Don't think we didn't see your car parked out side either, we did and, it has to go. You can do better. Take our advice and buy as we instruct and we can improve this disaster of your life and make you feel better about yourself.
Until we visit again next week, next month and every quarter to reevaluate your possessions and judge them inferior, outdated and remind you over and over until you replace them. And then, we will be back with the new version, the incremental change to degrade your belongings and whet the appetite again.
We are the catalogs, this is what we do.
One night we could be comfortably sitting on the couch watching the TV with a glass of wine and or feet on the coffee table, and the next morning a catalog that arrived in the mail makes us believe that a different couch, a new TV, a better glass to hold our wine or the latest style of coffee table will improve the experience that we were content with just a few short hours earlier.
This is how I see the catalogs that people welcome into their homes in the search for savings. All they do is increase the judgement of our possessions as inferior and make us feel that replacing them will increase the standards of living, improve our lives and make us better people.We invite these into our home to make a mockery of what we own and then thank them for offering us a discounted solution to problems we never had. What the catalogs are designed to do is to remove what we were contentedly eating and make us hunger for what they are selling.
For anyone trying to break habits of consumerism and end the personal debt cycle, the first order of business is to remove the catalogs and advertisements from the home. Pay attention to the difference between need and engineered desire.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
