Black Friday (or Stay Home?)

Image found on the Internet (of an actual Black Friday Stampede)

"When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living." – Tecumseh

Or you could trample an old lady on the way to a great bargain on a flat screen TV.

I sadly acknowledge with a great sense of loss that tradition, values, morality, and basic decency is lost from our society, and shall never be found again. As we are slowly (but gaining speed) consigned to the wreckage of all failed societies; whatever comes after us may sift through the detritus and wonder where we went wrong. There are many fingers to point; many events and changes to lay blame; but that is not the point of this post. It would take far too long to examine, be a fruitless endeavor, and I haven't the heart.

What I do want to do is talk briefly about just one element of modern society (in the United States at least) that deeply disturbs me: Black Friday. It is one thing to showcase a defect in society, but quite another to showcase the defect in individuals, indeed, individuals who perhaps are decent most other times. In short, it is about unchecked greed. Or as The Buddha said, "The root of all suffering is desire".

"If you haven't any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble." - Bob Hope

Let me simply say: Only the day before we were sitting around a table, surrounded by friends and family, giving thanks for that which we already have, giving thanks to vague and ill-defined, but no less important notions of health, family, and home. We had subsumed our desires and our greed in reflection of what truly matters. Then the next day, perhaps not even then (that night?), some of us forget all that we are thankful for, rushing in animal-like herds, pushing, shoving, stampeding for that which we do not own; do not possess; lest someone else deprives us of such material possessions at bargain basement prices. We cannot live without that toaster, that microwave, that TV, those pieces of clothing, those video games, jewelries, DVDs, toys, and other ultimately transient objects. In less than 24 hours, we sacrificed everything noble in ourselves to take on the mantle of everything base. Who does that?

In two words, the spiritually deprived. I am not talking of religion or even faith. I am talking of the individual spirit bent too long in the service of external selfishness - that which we are taught to value by commercialism from near birth, and not in the internal selfishness of self-improvement, morality, ethics, and the like. Virtue is an antiquated notion to be scorned. Vice is celebrated...usually live on TV.

From an article called Is Greed Ever Good? The Psychology of Selfishness, published March 2009, psychologytoday.com, by Steven A. Diamond Ph.D.

"This is our futile attempt to fill a spiritual and emotional emptiness within, to gratify some long-buried need, to heal or at least numb some festering psychological wound. Such self-defeating behaviors are rooted in formerly unmet infantile needs, childhood and adult trauma, as well as failure to appropriately be sufficiently selfish in the present. We strive instead to avoid the Self."

In some respects, we are actively encouraged by corporations, by our own government, to spend money, and lots of it, more than we can afford, for the sake of material possession. These same forces tell us that being selfish in the self is bad trait - that individual responsibility for taking care of one's own being, be it education, the food we choose to eat, the medicines we want to take - is beyond our comprehension and does ill for society even when it affects no one but ourselves. How dare we be so selfish as to feed our own children!? No, instead, go buy a video game.

My advice? Stay home Friday. Spend more time with your family. Read a book. Practice a craft, or enjoy a hobby. Cultivate the self; that which is best in you. Save some money. Live well...instead of living for goods.

-Brent

"To pray against temptations, and yet to rush into occasions, is to thrust your fingers into the fire, and the pray they might not be burnt." - Thomas Secker