It was Wednesday evening, the day before Turkey Day, and the ads on TV were blasting “ALL STORES OPEN THANKSGIVING! FIND SPECIAL SALES 6 PM TO MIDNIGHT!!” The strident voice urging me to cut short my beloved family day to go buy iPods and PlayStations instantly pissed me off. I turned angrily to Husband, who was happily puttering around the kitchen fixing himself a nutritious sliver of the pecan pie we would be serving the next day.
“This is outrageous!” I yelled in frustration. “Thanksgiving is for families to spend eating together and annoying each other and reminiscing about holiday disappointments past. It is NOT for trekking off to superficial shopping malls that will still be there when they wake up with indigestion the next day. What is happening to our culture? When did shopping replace making memories? When did wanting what we haven’t got become more important than being grateful for what we have? It’s called THANKS GIVING for chrissake! Can’t the stores leave us alone?”
Husband looked up bemused at my outburst and said, “Nobody’s making people go shopping, hon. The choice is theirs. Stores are in the business of doing business, but they’re not holding a gun to anyone’s head to buy things.” I glowered at him and his reasonable attitude. “Oh, yeah?” I sputtered intelligently. “How would the stores like it if people started picketing them to close on Sundays and holidays so families could spend some uninterrupted time together?” Husband’s eyebrows went up. “You’ve become quite the little Luddite, haven’t you?” he asked.
My first reaction was to say, “Wha’chu talkin’ about, Willis?” since I had no idea what a Luddite was. I mean I knew it had something to do with old-time British politics, like the Whigs and the Tories and the Spellings. No, not the Spellings. That’s just some Hollywood humor. I told Husband I was going to the bathroom, but really I went into my study and googled Luddite. In case you are similarly challenged English history-wise, the Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the early 19th century who lashed out at the changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution. They protested at the mills, sometimes destroying the mechanized looms that they felt were taking away their work and changing their way of life. Thank you, Wikipedia, and Hoo-rah, Luddites.
I strolled back into the kitchen and said to Husband loftily, “You think you’re so smart. I’m not a Luddite. I’m a Neo-Luddite.” My further googling unearthed Neo-Luddism, a modern-day personal philosophy for those who long for the days before technology turned the human race into droids with bionic thumbs for texting. My protest is more annoyance than defiance, though, since there’s no other way for me to post this blog entry other than on my sleek Toshiba Satellite laptop. That fact aside, I am still in some heady company in my protest against consumerism swallowing our humanity. Tyler Durden from Fight Club, fictitious as he was, felt the same way, and might I add I often feel fictitious myself. Also on board with me here is Nicholas G. Carr, author of Is Google Making Us Stupid? In answer to that possibly rhetorical question, I’m thinking it makes us smart in the moment, but stupid going far out. Husband was impressed by all my newfound knowledge and likeminded comrades, past and present.
OSV: I’m in good company, yes? Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nicholas G. Carr. . .
HUSBAND: Theodore “Unabomber” Kaczynski.
OSV: Have you read his manifesto? The punctuation is impeccable.
Daughter’s Featured Fotos lead us to Imagine images
trapped
mountains
fly
peeling the world