I often ask myself, like I know everybody else does, why is it Meg and I are so reluctant to join and hail the West, and more specifically the USA and Canada. I, of course, knew it all along, deep inside, almost subconsciously but it’s hard to put it in words and to admit that Meg and I are no longer anything like what the world demands us to be. We hate shopping. We are not consumers and just the idea alone that we may end up in a mall somewhere makes me want to hurl.
I know that people would think “Eww, what nonsense. What’s wrong with shopping?” And I say, everything. Absolutely everything. Buying tonnes of shit we don’t need has become what we are. What our life is. I don’t want such a life. I will do anything in my power to not end up in a place where human environment was substituted by vehicle environment and where the only way to live my life is to drive from one mall to another. I would rather be dead! And I don’t want a house! Especially not the North American variety.
On You Tube, I found a documentary that made me realize that it’s subject is one of the reasons if not the main reason, for my total lack of desire to belong, come back to, embrace the West. The West is all about consumption. You are a freak if you reject it. So, Meg and I are freaks. We can’t stand the idea of living a life that we are being convinced we have to live. And the growing economy fable! I could never figure out why it resonates with people. Why they believe that they have to spend their lives, be literally consumed, so that economy keeps growing! Does anybody know what the growing economy is needed for? And do they know how exactly they benefit from it and what they give up?
There are only few things I like about the West. And even those aren’t always true everywhere. I love that women are free to live their lives as they choose and that you, as an individual, are largely left alone. Though the past few years proved otherwise.
The documentary is old. But things have only gone worse and the American dream of making a shrine to yourself out of the objects you don’t need is engulfing the world. It is called Shop ’til You Drop.
I do believe that there is plenty of people out there who feel like me. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions! But marketing and consumption is all that we see around us. It is impossible to not despair. Are there places left on the planet where there are no malls and actual forest is still standing, I wonder. I want to find myself there.