Karma

Before you ask, this isn’t some hippie attack on the material culture.
I couldn’t bother myself to go that far with it, or to get that negative about it. Just couldn’t be bothered.
It’s just that lately, as I’ve been about to move out for the first time ever, I’ve been going through a bunch of stuff that I’ve had for years. Some of it was in such a state that it had to be thrown a way. A large amount of it could probably go to goodwill, but some of it I just had to keep, because it still meant something to me. I know eventually I’ll be able to just toss it all out the window and keep the memories, but not yet. Now, hold that thought.
On a completely unrelated mindtrack, I was thinking about Christmas as I walked from the parking garage to work today. I’m not sure why. But I was thinking to myself how a lot of really intelligent people condemn Christmas because it has become a purely secular holiday, revolving around people buying each other crap they don’t need in order to try and alleviate some weird media-imposed guilt. Which is true - for a large part. But that doesn’t mean it means nothing to people. And I think that’s where those people drop their argument. Beyond their condemnation of mass marketing, any counter-argument comes across as nothing but cheesy emotional excuses for its existence as such. I feel personally insulted when people assume that I participate in christmas because I am obligated by the media to do so.
I know that for a lot of people, that’s how it is. And you can kind of tell by the things that they go out and buy for people how well they know the person and just how important it really is. Would I be disappointed if I didn’t get presents? Hell yeah, I put a lot of thought into what I ask for. I get stuff I use. But if there were no more presents ever, would I think that Christmas was gone? No. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the “spirit of christmas” or even any religious elements. The attachments I have to the christmas, easter, valentines day, all that crap - they have nothing to do with all the corporate lauding. I would still decorate a tree, because that’s one of the most fun things to do all year. Same with eggs, because I’m an artist and my mother and I go all out… and it’s always fun trying to find them in the morning because she forgets where she hid them. Valentine’s day? I like chocolate. Yep, that’s all. No cheesy romantic stuff, my boyfriend isn’t obligated to buy me anything, I have never required myself to have one by that particular day, and my mom buys me all the sugar.
I could boycott the holidays, teach the media a lesson like some people do. But I already refrain from buying the pointless crap. And you know what? It doesn’t go away. It never will until everyone stops buying it, and with the large number of underinformed, brainwashed citizens in the country that believe they are making good purchasing decisions, that is not going to happen in my lifetime. And sure, I could work at organizing people and telling them not to buy it either, but not if they really thought it was what they wanted. Not everyone can give up their material ties so easily. Hell, I couldn’t get rid of half of that sentimental stuff that I found. Now my friend is Taoist. The last thing that this friend of mine wants is more junk, and after the last move, a lot of that same kind of memorabilia was done away with. My point is, we are all on different levels. It so happens that most of the country is at the level where they feel the need to purchase and hold on to things like that for no good reason until they come to the realization years later that they never needed it to begin with. Furthermore, there is the problem of what can even be categorized as “useless shit,” and until everyone agrees on that point, we cannot compeltely stop buying it. That’s how our commercial nation works. And it isn’t just going to break down overnight. It may be slowly decaying, but the keyword is slowly.
So people can go ahead and keep ranting about it in their “blogs”, just like this. They can either dribble on in some broken, misspelled variant of internet english about all the stuff they didn’t get, or curse antagonistically the fact that they never had a happy holiday because of domestic issues and use that to argue that no one needs it, period. It will be done intelligently. Many will agree with them. But listening to anything like that religiously is just as ridiculous as buying meaningless plastic on sight from an infomercial.
That can’t be stopped either. I can’t even tell anyone to give up the argument.
By no means am I being nihilistic here. One shouldn’t do or not do a thing simply because “it doesn’t matter anyway.” I celebrate christmas not because it doesn’t matter in the long run, but because it has personal value for me. Maybe that’s cheesy. But like I said before, it’s all internalized, and there’s no real way to turn everyone at once from complete externalization of self-worth.
Just a thought. Do with it whatever you like.