yet another blog post about overconsumption
Like many people I’ve been kind-of-sort-of obsessed with limiting my consumerism to save money and reclaim my time from greedy assholes. I used to think it was okay to “window shop” (filling online shopping carts and abandoning them) because I was still saving money but today I’m ruminating on how simulated consumerism is gross too. (I can’t help but assume this started a million years ago when I received the Barbie supermarket set as a birthday gift; it included a tiny Mastercard accessory.)
I simply don’t pay attention to things I already own. Once the initial excitement of buying a New Thing fades, it gets tossed into a corner and forgotten. I think the novelty clouds my vision, so to speak, in that I’m more excited about the idea of owning The Thing instead of actually—and I mean actually—looking at it, interacting with it, appreciating its materiality. This feels odd to say. I guess it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain but it’s one thing to repeat anti-consumerist rants in cliché lefty language and another to realize you’ve been floating through life in a daze.
I’m reminded of the years my neuroticism prevented me from understanding mindfulness as a practice. Neurotic people talk and talk and talk and they forget how to look and listen and experience. They retreat to their mind and lose the ability to interact with the world in meaningful/reciprocal ways. The term MiNdFuLnEsS has been so overused by vapid influencers and corporations that neurotic people never get a chance to experience the benefits of Actually Being Mindful. It wasn’t until I read a book about meditation by Charles Tart that it finally “clicked” for me. You can’t put all of this stuff in words but Charles Tart and G. I. Gurdjieff used the right words to explain concepts to me that I translated into action. I recommend checking them out if you’re a chatty nutjob like me.
Anyway if you’re wondering what prompted this post, I spent a couple hours staring at my collection of Tarot and regular playing cards with great intensity. I put a couple sets of the Major Arcana in order and observed how their story changes across different artistic interpretations. I feel guilty for not doing this sooner. Visual literacy is easier to access when it’s tactile.