Cliques and Creaks: Designed to consume

The first run for the season is under the belt, a short two kilometers with the dog. I am going to pretend that he got tired due to his advanced age and poor condition and that is we headed back early. It is always difficult to get out for the first time for some reason. It hasn't made it easier that I have hardly made it to the gym for almost a year. I have been doing other things.

I have been planning on getting out there for a few weeks now but, procrastination and excuses to justify me not got in the way. A client yesterday was talking about how he started barefoot running recently and how good it has felt and it was a reminder that yeah, it does feel good. Even as he talked, I could feel the tightness in my feet and the aches and pains in my back.

He was saying that his wife however is embarrassed by him running around their neighborhood without shoes and calls him a hippie. She talks about how it is dangerous and bad for the body and her mother agrees. It is interesting isn't it? Two million years of evolution and people think a company that makes its money by selling shoes knows better. I used to think the same too.

The amount of money I have spent in my life on unnecessary and useless junk is incredible I would imagine, if I could go back and reclaim half of it over the last 27 years I have been working for a pay, I would be very well-off and the struggle that I have continually faced would not have been a struggle at all.

Why do we tend to spend so much time and energy working to pay for things that we do not need or, more importantly, do not bring any significant added quality of life to our tables? Marketing is one thing but, it is also part of the communities we inhabit, the peers who affect how we feel having or not having various items.

We want to be part of groups and we want to stand apart from groups as individuals. A conundrum that leads to a simple loophole that can be marketed to. Instead of saying you need this to be associated with a particular group, they provide a range of the this meaning not only is there an external status tied to group membership, there is an internal one based on degrees of what item is held.

With another client the other day, she was talking about buying a new (used) car and how many they test drove and looked at. I added that I didn't test drive mine because it was new (when I bought it) and she thought I was crazy. But, my reasoning is this; the range of car I could afford had several competitors and no matter if I tried them all, I would be making decisions on relatively small variances (positives and negatives) considering they are all similar in size and performance. I had a cursory look online and at the range and picked the safest in the class and most reliable, a Honda.

Some people seem to have an idea that a car is a status symbol but, unless I am driving a Lamborghini (even if I had the money I wouldn't), what is the point? Do people really think that an Audi provides more life value than a Mercedes? A Toyota over a Nissan? Yet, we are not only programmed to care about the brand, the model matters too.

We have bought into a continual ramping up of our consumption of 'quality' to not only be part of an exclusive group, but be the top of that group. The competition is to be able to afford buy-in and the level of buy-in determines rank and status within the group. This is social engineering by those who benefit from us purchasing their items.

Once upon a time, this rank wasn't able to be purchased, it had to be earned. Originally through adding valuable skills to the group, (accomplishment), or taking position by force, (tyranny). Regardless of the process, direct action was required and we are likely hardwired to compete at these levels for resources.

It is a funny process though isn't it considering, like my clients wife, we feel embarrassed if we are unable to meet the expectations of the group we want to belong, even if it harms us. Rather than her being happy her husband is exercising and feeling better, she is worried about the way his exercises look to others and will even criticize it as incorrect, without ever having tried it herself.

This doesn't just cover what we buy of course, it covers every part of our society and culture and it gets drummed into us at every turn. We are brainwashed generation after generation so that we are socialized into acting like robots, believing what we do matters, and feeling that our membership to a group means something, even if we accomplished nothing to get there.

We join cliques that limit our movement and then wonder why our bodies creak. As I see it, all of these things tie in together. The news, the advertising, the FUD, the false patriotism, the polarization, useless entertainment and all of the ways they manipulate us into making decisions. It is all designed to make us feel inadequate with what we have and better people if we have more. And we buy-in, again and again and think that maybe the next purchase will be the one that fills the voids we have become.

Taraz
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