Do
you often drive to malls and to other places of direction-less
shopping, only to buy something you don't really need? Do you buy the
newest gadgets just as they are released, spending your hard-earned
money without a second thought? Do you while speaking in polite
company wax suddenly poetic about television shows, explaining their
plot-lines instead of making conversation, speaking emphatically
about people whom you do not know personally and who do not actually
exist? If you have answered Yes to any of these questions, you are
more than likely self-enslaved to conspicuous consumerism, to driving
around in your car wasting gasoline without a clue as to your
purpose, to accruing superfluous debt, and to staring at the
compelling and intricately woven tales that emerge regularly from a
flickering plastic box (which you likely bought at high price and
labored diligently to mount upon your living-room wall).
Can
you imagine living now, today, without electricity? Can you imagine
living in a world in which electricity were in sporadic or limited
supply? Can you imagine not being able to purchase, at any time of
day or night, as much cheap gasoline as you to wish buy at any one of
thousands of separate, well-lit retail locations? Do you consider
resource-conservation, composting, and recycling to be a waste of
time? Have you become so addicted to your pocket computer that your
mind has lost its ability to reason, to recall important information,
to think for itself, or to keep itself occupied past the setting of
the sun? If you see a reflection of yourself in any of these scalding
but poorly-worded questions, you are a slave to Big Oil, a slave to
your own automobile, a slave to electricity, a slave to your
electrical devices, a slave to the white men who own the electrical
companies, a slave to the coal that makes the steam that runs the
electrical plants, a slave to the railways that transport the coal,
and a slave to the whims and fancies of the fat-cat fuckers on Wall
Street who trade in and control the price of coal futures (and who,
by fiat, trade in and control you and your ability to Pursue your
Happiness).
If
you are a self-respecting, happiness-loving patriotic American, you
would do well to fight self-enslavement to any external thing,
person, device, physical condition, and state-of-mind. The patriot is
self-sufficient in order to preserve his country's limited natural
and national resources and to make sure his (self-imposed) need does
not affect his country's ability to provide for the common defence.
The patriot does not rest her hopes and dreams on external conditions
such as bandwidth speeds or back-to-school-sales – rather, she
maintains a pure and loving heart into which and from which all the
Blessings of Liberty flow; she keeps her heart in its nebulous state
and denies herself all but the basic necessities; she is a tough and
hardened operator who minds not cold, heat, nor personal privation –
she focuses rather on providing for the general Welfare, on
establishing Justice, and on forming a more perfect Union in her own
life and, by extension, in the life of her vast and beautiful nation.
A
mere one hundred and fifty years ago, we Americans went to war
amongst ourselves to battle the evils of slavery (among other
reasons), yet now, in 2012, we pay good money to enslave ourselves
willingly to TV shows, digital gadgets, internal home lighting,
pillow-top mattresses, rich and fatty foods, automobiles, shopping
malls, and gyms. One of my ancestor died fighting the evils of
slavery, shot by a sniper's bullet during the battle of Vicksburg; by
remaining vigilant to the ever-grasping, ever-enticing tendrils of
our ridiculous modern society and of their power to destroy my
virtue, I shall make sure his sacrifice was not made in vain.
場黑麥
ioanni
elymucampus fecit
p.s.
the author would like to point that he is no less a slave in these
matters than most other Americans living today
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