Christmas Shopping

We've come across COSTCO, SUVs & suburban life-style in many articles before. I would like to expand on that a bit. Expand it to include both the city as well as the countryside, the chic boutiques as well as the Home Depots, the Mercedes-Benzes as well as the pick-up trucks.

At the same time, I'd like to confine the topic to consumption. I don't want to talk about how bad chain-shops are for the environment, or how they destroy all kinds of other shops in the vicinity, how they exploit labor or show up execrable taste or behavior. Valid concerns, to be sure, but just not my main focus right now.

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A few weeks ago I went and had a look at a local tycoon's newly furnished apartment, and besides the main door which reminded me of a bank-vault, I was very much impressed by the walk-in closet which had enough space to hang up 250 suits. The place is for sale right now, it is a couple of minutes walk from where I live and the guy is asking a cool 19 million. My friend Alex, who renovated the place for 7 million just recently, thinks it is worth about 15 million. As far as I know said tycoon spent exactly one night in the place.

But back to the suits and back to consumption. Who needs 250 suits? I use the word need on purpose here, because one may want 250 suits, but it is hardly conceivable for one to need them. Who needs several furnished, but otherwise empty houses? Three or more cars? Several hundred pairs of shoes with matching handbags?

Of course I am picking out extremes for my examples, but that is only to make a point. Why are we all so hell-bent on consumption? There's my unemployed friend - the one who wrote only a few months ago that they were "barely eating" - who is now drinking Beaujolais Noveau whilst eating the most expensive soft cheeses. He just bought a brand-new van, too. He didn't suddenly inherit a princely sum of money or won the lottery. All that happened is that he finally found a job and got his first couple of paychecks.

Why is it that although technology advances and we should by all means have more leisure time and a better life, the rat-race has never been more insane than right now and all we have to show for it is more THINGS? Everybody is always busy, busy, busy and while people say that they are working towards financial independence or any other dream-goal, I have yet to see more than one that actually does it. I am not advocating living on bread and water only here. I like a bit of luxury now and then just like anybody. I like a comfortable car, I like good food, and I like vacations on tropical beaches. Maybe somebody else likes other things, but that is not the issue.

What I don't get is what the Chinese call "Yue Guang Zu". Zu means "tribe", guang means "empty" and yue stands for "moon", or in this case, "month". The tribe of people who have no money left at the end of the month. This is not related to how much they make, because these tribal people manage to spend any amount of money. I have good friends who easily go through $300k a year - and that is although the company pays for their sumptuous apartments and gets them all kinds of other perks that ordinary mortals have to do without. Not a few of those guys actually have a negative bank-balance.

But enough of this ranting now.

What I ask myself is why this is happening. Does all the blame go to those clever marketing guys, who know more about our unconscious then we ever will? Are we all victims, not only of fashion, but of consumption in all its aspects? Is it just the old "Keeping up with the Joneses" syndrome in a new and much deadlier dimension? Somehow I don't think so. People are responsible for themselves, so they should be able to see that this is not a path that leads straight to happiness. It probably doesn't lead there at all - and still we march on.

Or is it perhaps a more serious problem, deeper down in our psyche. So deep down, in fact, that we have no clue how to go about solving it. Maybe all this consumption is nothing but "Ersatz" (replacement)? We shop until we drop, because real satisfaction is so hard to come by? Maybe deep down in our genes the programming is out of synch with the real world that we live in right now.

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Different angle again. A couple of years ago I went to Germany to visit some old friends. I had to make an appointment - everybody is busy, remember? - and we met in the nicely landscaped garden. There was a crisp tablecloth on the outdoor table, home-made cake was served and the coffee was caffeine-free. In the beginning our conversation was dominated by topics designed to help us to catch up on each other. But after a little while, there was nothing more to say. They showed us their house, obviously expecting praise on how they had refurbished and furnished it. Same with the garden and the landscaping. Finally, the talk came around to growing tomatoes. And got stuck there.

Here were my old friends, stuck in their middle-class lives, with all the things that a middle-class person might aspire to and the most exciting topic of conversation was the growing of tomatoes. We hadn't seen each other for at least two years. I somehow doubt that Liping & I will go there the next time we are back in Germany.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against gardening or tomatoes in particular, but if that is the most exciting thing happening in your life, then I am at a loss on how to deal with that. This simply can't be all there is.


Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friend
Then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is


Maybe true happiness is not to be found according to things that we want, but according to things that we need. Maybe these needs are anchored in our ape-genes and not so much changed by our learning over the last few thousand years. But of course we can't admit that because that wouldn't be sophisticated now, would it? But then I ask myself where this so-called sophistication is getting us. I do not see much evidence to show that we are improving overall. No "net gain in happiness" as I read a while ago in a popular science-fiction novel.

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I recently got a whole bunch of rare and old books. I haven't finished even one of them yet, because I want the pleasure to last as long as possible. I peeked into two of them and they have one thing in common. They both show how some people are standing head and shoulders above their contemporaries. Although times were much harder those days, these guys accomplished things that almost all people of these times would find pretty much impossible to duplicate. That is with the help of modern technology and knowledge. One of them is William Albert Robinson and the other one is Hanoi-born Bernard Moitessier. How did they say that again? Men of steel on boats of wood - and not the other way around.

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Somebody once said that real happiness is not found in the realization of those dreams which we developed as adults, but only in the realization of the dreams we had when we were children.

For Liping that means a happy family. She would go to Tierra del Fuego, if that's where she could find a happy family life. For me it is adventure. We are totally different, but so far we complement each other just fine.

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And one more phrase which has been jumping around in my head for a few days. After that I'll shut up. Here it is:


Are you amazed at yourself now? If not you better hurry up!