Be, Don't Buy

I recently read in the quotes section of someone's Facebook that "Freedom is having options."

While I'm not exactly sure that's what the Founding Fathers had in mind, it is very reflective of our consumer-focused culture.

One of my professors made a point a few weeks back that how we as Americans identify ourselves in the post-WWII period has shifted from "I am what I do" to "I am what I buy." We no longer identify with other people who hold the same job as in previous generations, but rather with those who consume the same things--clothes, music, movies, etc.

We've traded in being for buying.

Prime example: Bohemianism. Formerly, one was a Bohemian, denoting an intrinsic disregard for current trends and an artistic flair for the dramatic.

Today, one buys Bohemian in the form of flowing skirts and floral prints. The fact that the oxymoronic term "Boho-chic" even exists probably has everyone who lived in Montmartre at the turn of the 20th century rolling over in their graves.

Basically--to sum it all up--everything in our culture has gotten a lot more superficial, from our concept of freedom to the way we relate to others.

Freedom isn't the right to choose without regulation, it's the right to be without oversight. In abandoning the latter for the former, we've traded in actual freedom for perceived freedom and reduced human beings from complex people to rational-acting, self-interested consumers.

(Unless, of course, you live in the underdeveloped world, in which case you haven't been reduced from a person to a consumer but rather from a person to "labor." That's another post.)

I refuse to be reduced. I refuse to be a consumer. I refuse to bow down at the altar of selfish materialism and ambition and instead I choose to be.

Thank you for your time.