Rant 145: Addictions

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Rant 145
Addictions

"How was it possible the Americans spend more for trash bags than 90 of the world's 210 countries spend for everything? Could it really be true that we have twice as many shopping malls than high schools? That we consume our average body weight - 120 pounds - every day in extracted and processed materials?"
-Stephanie Kaza

"Despite the mantra of 'free trade,' price tags limit freedom and gratitude."
-Santikaro

"The existence of complexity says nothing about intelligence or a designer."
-Said in response to a Christian's argument

Do you think that all the razzle dazzle and endlessly marketed products, ideas, politics, religions, and other things gives you freedom through choices? How does such pseudo-variety manage to give you any freedom at all? You see something shiny and immediately want it and then act as if your happiness depends on getting it. But how many such things have you accumulated now? Things that lost their shine and no longer excite you and are now put away in closets or storage bins. Like drug addicted people, getting your "if only" "one more hit only just to tide me over" objects or experiences have only lead you on an endless treadmill, except your soul is so abraded and bruised by the gravel and sandpaper of the treadmill, that you are numb to any thought that happiness is unconditional. Happiness that merely shows up seems too quaint or boring to you after the highs and lows of the great thrill ride to nowhere that both society and yourself have inculcated and dutifully trained you to live by and under. Your addiction to traveling the gravel driveway of desire has blinded you to razor blades dipped in honey that you have been swallowing. And in any moment that your own forms of self-created suffering backlash across your perceptions, you immediately set about for some other fix to get you through it. New toys, new cars, travels, new gadgets, new books to read, new ideas, titillating images to view, new people, and new experiences are all waiting lined up for in this satisfaction guaranteed free market place that has crushed any semblance of freedom from your life. Instead of getting off the treadmill, you again simply make the mistake of running faster, as if by some miracle, this time, you will be able to get one or some more things that will finally make you permanently happy. The noose gets a little tighter, and your deep down inner fear at this gets twisted into excitement. As an automaton, dutifully functioning to keep this consumer republic operating, you lift your head high and claim you are free even though you can never say "no" to appeasing your cravings no matter ho much they limit, torture, alienate, and enslave you.

Are you trapped in a mutually reinforcing conspiracy of ineptitude? The ever widening circle of addicts and enablers that is the global market? Do you still think that when you are in your car that you are the one driving? Despite the fact that the roads, the industry, the economy, the desires and the lifestyle of a "driver" were all already prefabricated for you to get hooked into? (It seems like you are the one driving, but in fact you are what is being driven by carefully planned skillful manipulation of your desires, your sense of longing, your participation in the economy, and even your sense of "freedom.") Do you find yourself blaming smokers for your breathing problems but yet still use the electricity and the vehicles (planes, trains, and automobiles) that cause most of the air pollution that will eventually choke your future out? You rant and rail against the domination of the corporations and the governments that you feel are ruining your planet and your life but you still buy their products (whether in the stores and shops for the corporations or the elections and the political parties/ideologies for the governments)? You hate the system and call it the machine but this world-destroying machine is what has coddled and babied you. You point out the amazing growth in the gap between the haves and the have-nots even as you clamor to be among the haves and buy into the delusion that you too can have a lifestyle in which every satisfaction is guaranteed and every thing you dislike can be ejected permanently. You have become a cardboard cut out. A personality gathered up from the prefabricated fragments of magazine articles, television talk shows, lines from popular songs, website ideas, and consumerist spirituality. You are addicted to the razzle dazzle of this delusion and claim it to be "who you really are." (The most pernicious lie in the global market is this false sense of "who you really are.") You ever stop to think about how it could cost so much money to buy the things, the access to the ideas, and the other lifestyle accoutrements to express this sense of "who you really are"?

You think of yourself as being free but freedom is just another mass-produced item you are shopping for. Originality is just another word used in advertising hype. The revolution is simply another marketing tool. Compassion is merely another sales technique. Love is the market's foot in your door getting you to buy more manufactured consent. The sponsors have bought all of the airtime in your dreams. The silver linings of your optimism and the black holes of your pessimism have been pre-packaged and are ready for your dutiful consumption. Stop lying to yourselves and to others and pony up to the bar already. You are a consumer. Your religion is consumerism. Your temple is the market.  And the sacrifices called for in this religion of yours are your life and the world around you.

Unless of course you might actually want to wake up and live a life of non-addiction. A lifestyle that needs no inculcated desires. A life that chooses to be content as opposed to grasping after things, tools, ideas, and plans. Perhaps. But do you know how hard that is? I wouldn't want you to feel a moment of discomfort now, would I? It is possible. Oh...what's that? Look! There's something shiny over there.

October 27th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[Under the influence of Buddhist ritual and the fact that, as of last night, the Chicago White Sox OWN the world! Sweeeeeeeeeeeep!]

[fluffy]

yeah

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

yeah

Yeah?

[fluffy]

yeah

Yeah?

yeah

[Cain]

o rly?

[agent compassion]

ya rly!

[Cain]

NO WAI!!!!!

Alright, I've stopped hijiacking this thread now.

[agent compassion]

Awwww

[B_M_W]

"The existence of complexity says nothing about intelligence or a designer."
-Said in response to a Christian's argument

I like this one, a very simple statement against the arguement of Irreducible Complexity. ^_^

You think of yourself as being free but freedom is just another mass-produced item you are shopping for. Originality is just another word used in advertising hype. The revolution is simply another marketing tool. Compassion is merely another sales technique. Love is the market's foot in your door getting you to buy more manufactured consent. The sponsors have bought all of the airtime in your dreams. The silver linings of your optimism and the black holes of your pessimism have been pre-packaged and are ready for your dutiful consumption. Stop lying to yourselves and to others and pony up to the bar already. You are a consumer. Your religion is consumerism. Your temple is the market. And the sacrifices called for in this religion of yours are your life and the world around you.

This was my favorite part. The way you expose all of those values as fraud is genius.

Unless of course you might actually want to wake up and live a life of non-addiction. A lifestyle that needs no inculcated desires. A life that chooses to be content as opposed to grasping after things, tools, ideas, and plans. Perhaps.

The question is: is there a way to obtain this?

Another question is: Should I not be asking this of you, but instead myself?

[Hoshiko]

Hugh, may I quote this?

A++

[LMNO]

Yeah, I'm thinking of yoinking this, too.




[Notes the humor of a tequila-obsessed author ranting against addiction]

[Zurtok Khan]

Hugh isn't addicted to tequilla he's...differently-psycologically-associated with tequilla.

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Unless of course you might actually want to wake up and live a life of non-addiction. A lifestyle that needs no inculcated desires. A life that chooses to be content as opposed to grasping after things, tools, ideas, and plans. Perhaps.

The question is: is there a way to obtain this?

Another question is: Should I not be asking this of you, but instead myself?

Both. But asking yourself is better. I have learned to become several microns less addicted by meditation. At this rate I should be all clear in about 333 years.

Death to Poultry isn't addicted to tequilla he's...differently-psycologically-associated with tequilla.

Exactly. I actually have not had any tequila in the last three weeks.

Death to Poultry, may I quote this?

A++

Yes you may. LMNO too.

[B_M_W]

Both. But asking yourself is better. I have learned to become several microns less addicted by meditation. At this rate I should be all clear in about 333 years.

So, a couple more lifetimes after this one and you should be home free. ^_^

[sakredchao]

man you sound like jesus when he went off on that "do the birds worry about their food" stuff.

the christians would be proud.

kim