Attention shoppers!

We will hear a lot of these pre-announcements of upcoming sales etc…. The shopping spree season is well underway.

Materials over morals, stuffs over senses. We need to fill up the empty space. Cosco knows this. It provides shoppers with huge shopping carts.

Buying in bulk, buying at convenient stores, buying at drive-ins.

Buying online, off line, on credits, by cash. Just go ahead and buy. Shop until you drop.

Attention shoppers! That bag is on sale. Those pairs of shoes are not. Gym outfits remain an exclusive deal and domain; no discount (you already paid for the membership, might as well show up – but please, not in ugly outfit).

Air fares jump through the roof (elastic pricing)..all kinds of fares jump over the normal distribution curve (hey, gotta to pay the price to earn those un-depreciated memories).

If staying hom, you will end up with paying more for new phones (and indirectly experience someone else’s travel experience), new transmission capabilities (5G) with new pricing.

It’s been a long drought ( due to climate change and someone up high trying to “drain the swamp”) so we need to shop before we drop. It makes one feel better to transact and to carry stuff home (hunter and gatherer instinct).

Can’t help it. We were made to be bi-pedalist, just to end up with using the right foot for both gas and brake pedals (what’s the use of the left foot anyway?) to fight for parking space at the Mall.

Homo Erectus, Homo distractus… Christmas trees & decorations, jingle bells and carols, all serve to evoke the feelings of nostalgia for loved ones (some might have passed away). What do you do this year that is different from years previous?

Spreading the Gospel of consumption is one thing. Believing in it with all your heart and soul is another. Do we really believe deep down inside that we can take all these “merchandise” with us when we leave this world?

To reflect on this will somehow make us feel hollow and empty. The soul could never be fulfilled until it finds rest in Thee, St Augustine once expounded. OK, how about mixing the spiritual with the material as a compromise? Technology and Religion? Arts and Sciences?

Go ahead and find out for yourself. The screen will capture your attention, or whatever is left after your shopping spree season. Attention shoppers! We have a good deal on your screen. Right about …..NOW (scarcity is the mother of action: if we don’t get it, someone else will). So we succumb to the temptation, rationalizing it away later, and once in a while, returning the merchandise out of (buyer’s) remorse, having satisfied our primal urge to “hunt and gather”.

In modern parlance, it’s called hoarding. It has no cure, and is only more infectious, when we hang out with like-minded people: ” look, I got this on sale”…..Like sorority sisters, we blame this on peer-pressures, on one-up-manship …..But we know veneer from values, from what is inside, at times eroded and ugly, full of pain and empty space, which materials alone cannot fill.

How can we teach kids “less is more”, when our attention veers toward “more is it”!