materialism probably was around to some extent way back when, but the accumulation of "stuff" didn't really kick in until about 10,000 years ago when we started domesticating plants and animals and became more sedentary so we could tend to said crops and animals. before that, we were more nomadic hunter/gatherers, moving around every few months, and accumulating stuff would only slow you down. their egalitarian lifestyle was slowly transformed into the materialistic, stratified world we live in today. yay agriculture!
Black friday
- Thread starter CRBSMILE
- Start date
materialism probably was around to some extent way back when, but the accumulation of "stuff" didn't really kick in until about 10,000 years ago when we started domesticating plants and animals and became more sedentary so we could tend to said crops and animals. before that, we were more nomadic hunter/gatherers, moving around every few months, and accumulating stuff would only slow you down. their egalitarian lifestyle was slowly transformed into the materialistic, stratified world we live in today. yay agriculture!
As Buk would say "learn to love your walls".
jordan
lothario speedwagon
"what's that, sarah palin? robocalls are annoying and politicians shouldn't use them? wait a sec, my phone is ringing."
"hello?"
"now is the time that america needs a strong leader. someone like JOHN MCCAIN."
i was grasping at straws with the DNC list... but it really is the only thing bush did in 8 years that made my life even marginally better by the slightest bit.
Africa benefited in a huge way but that's about it.
CarversDog
RIP
I dunno. Now that the campaigning is over I sorta miss my robo-calls from Joe Biden and John McCain and all my state representatives. Fickle bastards.
mjp
Founding member
I wasn't insinuating that you don't care, or that there aren't a lot of people care a whole lot. I just think, cynically or realistically, that it doesn't matter if you care. When most of the world doesn't care it becomes almost impossible to make any widespread changes in places like that. Ask the people who were marched into Nazi death camps while a good number of people all over the world knew full well what was happening in them. People in America certainly knew. In fact the Warner brothers wanted to make a film called Concentration Camp in 1940 (I believe that's the date - but well before America became involved in the war) but the board that enforced the film code told them there's no way they would let any anti-German sentiment like that onto the movie screens of America. They didn't want to stir things up.
As for the letter, I think those sites that present things as conspiracies are instantly and rightly dismissed by 99.9% of the world, so if the letter is legit, kooks publicizing it first will effectively strip any shred of legitimacy from it. If it is real, maybe it was released to conspiracy theorists on purpose. That's kind of a classic disinformation tactic; feeding truth to kooks in order to get the majority of people to dismiss it as the rambling of the lunatic fringe. But it smells like a hoax to me.
Father Luke
Founding member
I think it all is relative to what the person is buying the thing for. Art is far different then a plasma TV, though of course you can watch art in the form of television shows on a plasma TV. The correlation between commercialism, and consumerism is more so what I'm speaking about. Many people are unhappy, and then they see a TV add, that TV add adds to their unhappiness because it suggests "you shouldn't be happy unless you own our product." In sum, the part of the system I don't like is the part that suggests we are fat, ugly, helpless losers who should be miserable, unless of course we have this product... And the people who buy into that.
Good post.
I don't really want to get into the American media and it's six owners... Part of the issue we are seeing is derived directly from the lack of information out there for intellectual growth, and the stigma that major media is creating towards those who go look for it themselves.
mjp
Founding member
And what kind of people are those? Who are these people who are unable to see through the lie of advertising the way that you are? And how did you become so much more enlightened than they are?
I don't think I am so much disgusted with advertisers as I am with the masses that put their things that they have above the good that they do. And I don't know if I can blame advertising completely for that either. It is a person's upbringing, and their choices, a lot of time it can be their religion and their politics. It's all so enmeshed together, it's really hard to tell how people got so far removed to what should be more important than things.
In my angy feminist days, I remember being so intensely angry with a billboard ad of a woman's ass with an egg on it reading, "Anything goes with eggs." So there is an aspect of advertising that pisses me off in forming the "ideals" in the minds of society, but sometimes commercials boarder on brilliance and cutting edge art - so I really don't know how I feel about it.
Again, I have said nothing.
In my angy feminist days, I remember being so intensely angry with a billboard ad of a woman's ass with an egg on it reading, "Anything goes with eggs." So there is an aspect of advertising that pisses me off in forming the "ideals" in the minds of society, but sometimes commercials boarder on brilliance and cutting edge art - so I really don't know how I feel about it.
Again, I have said nothing.
Gerard K H Love
Appreciate your friends
You said plenty.:) I hate that 'eggs go with everything' ad. I know.