We all shouldn't shop today, anyway, though. I don't just say this because I'm going to be at work tomorrow at 8:30 sharpish. We shouldn't do this because people have been told they will work Thanksgiving or be fired. We can do this in honor of striking Walmart workers. We can jointly acknowledge that Black Friday isn't even the best day, necessarily to shop.
I know, for me, I hate crowds and noise and bullshit. On any given Friday, I would just like to go to work. My actual shopping is a long, slow, loving hunter-gatherer experience that has a lot to do with looking at circulars and hitting the mall when it is not crowded with other bodies and touching merchandise and making thoughtful choices and not going -"Shit! Now! Buy this shit now! More shit now! ARGGGHHHH!".
The idea of standing in line in the cold outdoors in expectation of some kind of crazy sale is--so not gonna be me. So I feel like a right smug tart telling anyone this should not be you, either. But really--let this not be you. Maybe, even if consumerism has its place, making a holiday of consumerism is totally out of place, and we should really make a place for enjoying a post-Thanksgiving high that does not involve swiping a card and trying to buy love from our fam by getting them discounted consumer goods.
And yeah--consumerism sucks in general and I don't know how it relates to Ferguson, specifically. I don't care. Black Friday is tacky and sometimes even violent (anarchists targeted the Macy Parade this year)*. I have no sympathy for it. I'm just saying, shopping does not deserve a holiday. People do.
*Nota bene: by anarchists, the newspaper article means "anarchists" and I mean "people who don't understand why a movement that signifies by pissing people off, will only serve to piss people off."
3 comments:
I'm with you 100%, my family was never materialistic, and we never bought into the frenzy. We just had fun together for the weekend.
Hi Vixen, in the QBL rather than mineral, vegetable, animal and human, it's mineral, vegetable, animal and speaker.
What's happening in Black Friday and what we see in the ginned up anger at Ferguson are the people being manipulated back into the animal level.
The 1st 3 chakras from the bottom we share with the animals. And it is not until the heart chakra that it's possible to become a speaker.
In the diaphragm chakra all is emotion. There is no separation between an individual and his or her anger. One is in unity with one's anger, like an animal consumed with rage.
In the heart chakra, ego develops and then a constant dialogue occurs between what is right and what is wrong; what I feel and what I think. At this point there is some separation between the animal nature and the possibility of being a speaker.
All of these social actions that drive people back into the diaphragm chakra are returning them to an animal state.
Thoughts arise out of awareness and there is a possibility in the heart chakra of moving up rather than down. Thoughts can become more refined and take an upward direction toward awareness or be dragged down into the diaphragm chakra.
In a nutshell, whenever commercial activity or political activity is driving people back to the diaphragm chakra, it's a kind of black magic, suppressing the possibility of using this incarnation for an elevation to a higher level of consciousness.
"Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;
Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.
Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight grey;
Though hope fall from you an love decay,
Burning in the fires of a slanderous tongue."
-- Yeats
The language we use with respects to both mass shopping events and physical protests relate to people as animals as well" "herds of people", "human stampedes". Whether it's "madding crowds" swayed by propaganda or consumer advertising, people have to look up past what they're being sold--foreign manufactured electronics that one doesn't need, or provocative demonstrations that feel momentarily powerful but aren't effectively targeted in the long run.
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