Happy Eid..?
It’s been a while since i last logged online for a proper set of days.. Life can suck you in a bit too much for you to get a gasp.. However, i did have a couple of revelations through out this “black out”..
Now allow me to nag a bit, and bare with me if you may..
It’s Eid Al Fitr here in Saudi.. For non-muslim readers, it’s one of our official holidays celebrating a religious event, fancy Googling it up? Anyways, it’s funny how sometimes the smallest actions can speak of someone’s up-bringing.. Now, scale that up to a major slice of the “pretentious” society we’re growing into.. We’re all lovers and haters now, and brands are the new man-made gods we all are under.. Now this might seem like a good thesis statement to start a topic about “Consumerism”.. But to spare you the written lectures, am sure some of you already got sick of it, but still, what am writing about today doesn’t stray away from that fact..
I miss talking about politics, but things can grow on you.. Especially when all i see is brands that summarize a whole, and the whole has individuals in them that care less about their own voice to stand out.. it’s not bad to blend in, believe me, i’d use camo “fashion” trends if i wanted to, but it’s good to see a sense of standing alone stating something..
Now, away from that drift of thought in the last paragraph, and let’s get back to our point here..
Why would a small pleasurable habit grow so big, tumorous in nature, and infest our realities? and maybe fill our politics with it’s same ideals?
We shop, and we sell what we buy, and we never think of creating something of our own.. Not for lack of knowledge, but because it’s easy to get an already baked cake and then call it your own.. We buy and sell it, and we buy some more to sell some more.. What do we have in the end? a boring cycle of catalog browsing and finger-scratched credit cards.. And yet, we end up with a pile of some more rubbish that ends up on our table waiting for the starving consumer society..
Some say it’s a world epidemic, a social epidemic to be precise.. What i see around me, even in our ways of life.. We buy politics.. We buy economy, maybe not since it’s god-given, but when this earth dries out, we will.. We buy medicine.. We buy cars.. And recently, we buy weapons to protect ourselves.. I wonder, if this man-made fluid (aka Money) would ever run out, or becomes useless some how.. Would we grow money to buy things with?
Correct me if am wrong, but it is smart to come up with our own ways to actually SELL something more than what god gave us in raw form.. I’m not denying that we do, but let’s be a bit realistic here, what’s the percentage of that to what we buy? How much of our currency is being recycled by the hour on things and thingettes that are predesigned, prefabricated, pre-ordered.. Welcome to the Pre-age..
Yes, to those who wonder, this might seem like a pointless rant, but think about it.. How much time do you spend thinking of this? and how much time do you spend thinking about what to buy next? We’re an arab society that has nothing arab about it.. What? the words? the culture? they all fade away sometimes, especially when the IKEA generation is shedding all the Japanese made spotlights on them..
I wonder, when will a time where Made in KSA would be something real, not written in some biblical transcript in Made’n Saleh..
Again am not denying, and some might say we’re heading there.. Yeah, will i’d like to see that in my life time.. It wasn’t that far fetched for that young japanese kid to see his country turn from ruins to a strong nation in both national and international economics..
Away from politics, just a couple of miles away, lies this concern to what society represents and what society stands for.. What it dresses it self with what it has to offer, not to brag about what it can buy in Marbella for instance..
You tell me, is it that far fetched? or will you “buy” your way out of this question as well?
A wise man once said, “Man will make his own tools of destruction in no time, and then fall victim under it’s claws”..
No wonder he’s wise, eh?
Yours,
Lou..
