Do we need it?

I’m going to rant for a minute.

Over the years, I have spent a fair bit of time in situations where I had very few amenities. I have lived with scant few of the extra stuff that we desire for a decent life. I’ve worked at Youth Camps. There your bedroom consisted of a single room cabin. You shared the cabin with seven other people- six kids and one other counselor. The cabins were boxes that fit the eight bunks necessary for us to sleep in.

I didn’t notice I was missing anything. The kids did at the beginning, but even with them the feeling passed.

I saw a book recently entitled “The only 127 things you need”. We have lost perspective.

I was talking with a friend recently about “Keeping up with the Joneses.” I had asked her, who she thought benefited from this attempt to outdo each other? She had said that nobody did. If the Smith family bought a car, and then the Jones family bought a nicer one. Both were victims.

I asked who sold the car to them both?

I’m ranting here and don’t have an explanation ready at this point. But this is a thread that we could follow all the way to the core of our culture’s broken soul. Consumption is not the root of the problem. Consumption and the consumption mentality are an addiction. We sense a hole in us and we try to fill it. It is clear that the things we are trying to fill the hole with aren’t the correct things. Witness the rates of depression and suicide. But let’s continue down the rabbit hole. Let’s attempt to see what answers we can find. We are aware that we are consuming due to a lack of something. We are lacking some real need. And we have become addicted to consumption by accident in the process.

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