Thursday, March 20, 2008

II of III: THE PLASTIC SEDUCTION OF CREDIT

I am afraid to look at what I really think. 
It is not very “New Age Positive” 
Fish are free if you catch them-- but they will kill you
if you eat them.
 
I hate how much I, as an American, have.  Boxes and
boxes of food, furniture and clothes made in some other
place, fill warehouses from floor to ceiling. I pull
out my plastic card from my pocketbook and it is
swiped on an electronic machine.  The machine
registers my credit, how much money I have spent and
whether my card represents a secure exchange. 
I do not like that in a nanosecond, all my personal information is
made available by this electronic transaction. 
 
It is not that I have anything to worry about. 
I have enough, but I feel the coldness of the exchange. 
I could still use paper money, but it is worth it to the credit card
company to pay me to use their card to track my spending. 
They know how to get me. It is simple.  
Offer me a few percentage of money back if I use the card.  
I, of course, am a lamb to the slaughter to obtain these few extra points. 
It is my own fault for using the card.
 
Then, there is the seduction of a plastic card as
money.  I cannot feel the money I spend in the virtual
world of non-form.  It is very easy to override my
physical limits. The temptation to spend even on
things I do not need or even worse, do not have the
funds to buy, becomes very great.  Marketing Gurus know
exactly how to get me to open my purse strings.  It is
called “Sale.” I must take advantage of the sale right
now, or the product will be gone.  The sale provokes
the economics of scarcity. Even though I am drowning
in the ocean of physical objects, sales entice me to
swipe my card in exchange for taking this object home.
Most of the stuff I buy at discount or on sale I do
not need or hardly ever use.  I wind up giving it
to the local thrift shop, which actually  turned
me away the last time because they were too full of stuff 
to receive any more.
 
Everything seems backwards and I am caught.  It would
take a great effort to change my life to no longer
participate in this madness.
 
I am afraid the housing market will keep falling and that I
will no longer be able to sell my house. I am afraid
the stock market is once again being manipulated to
cream profits off the top.  (Actually, the creaming has
already happened and the bloat in the stock market,
the result of a strategy that allowed so much money 
to go into the hands of so few, has already happened. 
I am watching the downward spiral.) I knew it
would happen.  I know the system was sick and could no
longer support itself. And I did not follow my
instincts.  We all swim in the same ocean.
 
I am jumping all around, because the illness I see is all so interconnected.
Everything comes from a belief in the primacy
of money as the reason for Being. 
 
My personal diatribe continues. There are so many blaring inconsistencies:
I no longer grow my own food or build my own house. 
There is absolutely nothing that I have to do.
All Time is created for me to watch my TV, consume product and
grow fat. Thank God our human bodies rebelled by growing fat. 
We realize something must change.
 
The solution is to exercise.
 
Palaces of exercise machines are everywhere.  Mirrors
reflect our images back to us as we sweat and peddle
and row and lift weights. But does any one notice
that the center is taken out of the exercise?
 
What was once intrinsic in the action of being human
in a community of others-- to hunt, grow food and build
together, no longer motivates the movement of our
bodies. Now, it is the fear of growing fat because of
the temptation of all that we can consume. We sweat to
keep our bodies from growing sick and fat, to ward off
the basic intention of our culture, which is to consume. 
Even exercise becomes an act of consumption.
 
If there were not so many homeless people and so many
slums needing attention, I would not be ranting so. 
This is my dilemma. I vision human communities
generating structures of work, effort and power that
help each of us make our city glow with beauty. To
align the effort of the muscle on our backs to create
a world together, instead of working individually just to avoid 
a collision with the world of fat -- or feeding the narcissism to 
generate an external image as our identity. 
"Creating for no reason but the sheer joy of doing" 
becomes a forgotten radical idea. 

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