Fad No# 8: STUFF

Okay, once again I'm stretching the boundaries of my blog concept, trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. So when I say "Fad of stuff", what I REALLY mean is "Western society's obsession with product consumption". And I judge from within - I'm as guilty as the rest of them/us/you. Walking to work this morning I passed one of those billboard bus-shelters (rather, an undercover advert that also happens to be a handy place to hail a bus), advertising the leading MP3 player (no free advertising from ME, Steve Jobs!). I felt the weight of my own (dormant) iPod (Dang! I did it anyway!) swinging in my jacket pocket, and I suddenly thought, my god, so much stuff! Advertisers are constantly trying to tell us that we "need" the next new thing, but we say, "Oh no, you're not catching me out that easily! Ha ha!"
But then moments later, we find ourselves thinking, "You know, entirely unaffected by that big billboard over there, I have just independantly and of my own volition decided I really want and need one of those new Product X's." Like the classic addict, we could give up annnnny time we want to, we just don't want to. I have phases when I want nothing more than to throw all my worldly goods to the wind, and run away to the trees. Well, I still want to run away to the trees, but there're a few things I'd like to take with me... Just because I might aspire to a mud-brick shack with a pit-toilet, doesn't mean I am over the addiction.
I remember a time when the only people to have mobiles were high flying business men on TV, and they were probably called portable phones, and they were the size of a house-brick. I remember when you felt like a pretty bloody lucky spotty teenager if you had a Walkman to listen to your Top 40 radio mix tapes. I remember when we had to walk twenty miles to school in the snow, even in the middle of summer, with no shoes and through pits of snakes... yeees, times were better in the days before stuff.
So what am I saying here? Better to be time-rich and money-poor (easily said by a child of a safe middle-class upbringing!); things can't give you a hug at night; status anxiety is the new cancer (hmmm. A flippant and ill-considered metaphor. I'm a fan of those!)
And yes, it's ironic (I think... I never did quite get a full grasp on the concept of irony) that if it weren't for certain "stuff", this blog would never have happened (thank you, faithful little puter!)
So, yay for stuuuuff!