24

The Rat Race

Since when did shopping become an art form? When was the moment we started to enjoy shopping with all its bonuses such as a coffee or a cup of tea at extortionate prices.

There was a time when shopping was purely to feed the family and one only went out for anything else as needed. So who persuaded us that this is what we like doing? Myself I would much rather have the time. My time is precious; why on earth would I use it up trawling the streets of a town or shopping precinct aimlessly?

Yes shopping trips are aimless, they are unproductive and time consuming and can leave you feeling deflated if you have not found that elusive bargain that you knew was there but you must have missed it or someone else managed to get there first.

You see this all comes back to the fact that capitalism has channeled the creative energy of people through money and profit. Everyone on the High Street and in the shopping centre is playing bingo on their feet. The gamble is put in front of you, the sales posters jostle for number one place and you are transfixed; perhaps here is the dress of your dreams; turn one corner and you will see it. But if you miss it – well there is always a fast food outlet or fifty of them for the unlucky to gorge themselves.

This is your rat race, this is the life created for you by capitalism.

Just ask yourself if it is the life you really want. Or is it too late and you cannot see any other way? Well I can assure you there is another way. Take back control of your own life, do not be led by the nose like an animal to the slaughter.

Think for yourself.

What do you want to do today?

I mean really do in spite of all the sirens calling you to the shopping centers through advertisements telling you that the brighter the colour of your hair the more you will be noticed.
 

Lies! All lies!
 

See through it and think for yourself.

Yes the advertising sirens call you through the mist to your destruction. They take away your need to find yourself and you are drawn on to the rocks of capitalism. They do their job well, they have us all running scared of being ‘normal’. They have emptied your pockets and thrown you back into the bear pit to look at yourself once again, to look at the advertisements and sink into that depression that will only be lifted when the coffers are full again and you can go out after the sirens who promise you the earth. Then the circle begins again and they empty your pockets and throw you back to get more money.

Add to this how unsafe the world of big business is. A friend who now has offices in London spoke of his fear about the amount of monies he was playing with and harked back to the old days when you bought something for five pounds sold it for  ten pounds and that money was in your pocket ready for you to go buy another few items to make a profit. If one deal did not work you had something solid to fall back on. Not so today, this man is now working in hundreds of thousands of pounds and admitted that when he stops and thinks what he is doing and how fragile he actually is he gets scared.

In the newspapers this weekend we have one young trainee with a city law firm caught on tape while in an inebriated state stating that his work was nothing but “f***ing people over for money”.

Does drink bring forth the truth?

Then on the next page I read that the MP Nadine Dorries (who got paid a fortune for being in the jungle in the reality show,  “I am a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” without even telling anyone she was going to be in the jungle for quite some time), an MP with a job that attracts a large salary, has now been handed a six figure book deal.

How many struggling writers, excellent ones at that, could command such a deal. The only reason Nadine Dorries has secured this deal is because she is already a celebrity. Every Xmas the shelves of bookshops and the face of online bookstores are full of the rich and famous getting even more money by writing.
If an MP does a day’s work where do they get time to trot off to join reality shows and write books? The rich and famous expect, no command that we should hand over our money to them just because they are rich and famous. Sorry but I would prefer anything I could manage to give to go to someone who I knew could write, who I knew needed something to eat or who I liked and could touch.

The supermarkets destroyed the corner shops where the shopkeepers family ate the left over fresh food from the shop every night and there was no waste. Waste was money, but the supermarkets have to create waste to draw in the people they need to shore up the profits of a huge place which offers everyone everything and must deliver.

Big profits carry big risks.

So why are we all persuaded that we have to win big? Why do celebrities need to take even more money. Why doesn’t the best art or writing get on to the front shelves of the bookstores.

Because we are being dictated to, we are being told who to watch, who to follow, who to support and we no longer think for ourselves.

Why does the lottery make one person rich to the tune of perhaps a hundred million when it could make a hundred people millionaires?

Because everything has to be bigger and better constantly. The rich have to get richer and the poor poorer by handing over all their money to the rich who already have more than most of the poor will ever earn in their lifetimes.

I am tired of this. I am tired of everything moving so fast. People’s memories get shorter because of it and they get greedier because of it.

Nothing is enough in this life it seems.

Perhaps this is where our extremism comes from. This is why people flock to get themselves aired on live shows such as Big Brother and Jeremy Kyle when not so long ago people would have felt shame at what they are airing. Now shame is secondary to wealth and notoriety it seems.

Yet life is full of those people who have not become extremists, who have no wish to deal in huge sums of money risking all, who do not gamble, who do not have plastic surgery. Yet when do we hear of these people?

Never, which is why there is a clamor on to be the best, the worst, the most extreme, anything to get noticed.

It seems the media is not interested in normal people and for that reason those who crave to be noticed can sometimes destroy themselves in the process. But do the media care? I think not.

I do not watch much television at all as I will not be drawn in to being at the same place the same time and being controlled by outside forces. So I only watch ad hoc when I have time and when it suits me to do so. But this week I sat through three soaps while visiting a relative and wondered at the end of them, when did these people clean their bathrooms, why didn’t I see people in old clothes cleaning their windows; where were the children? It appears only babies figure in soaps and they are never crawling around your feet but carried from person to person. How can all these people who do not appear to go to work fund their lifestyles? How can they all afford to socialize in pubs every day?  Where are these places with thriving pubs when every place in the country is shutting down  pubs and clubs as no one can afford to go there. These places are not reality, they are all a fallacy and yet millions follow. This is wrong.

Life is not a soap, life is what you make it.

The advertisers, and let’s be honest we are inundated with advertisements wherever we look, promise us the earth.

We can get rich playing bingo or lotteries; we can look like soap or film stars if we buy their makeup and perfumes and drive their cars. We are inundated with catalogues offering us wonderful clothes, invariably not produced in this country, but tempting us all the same to purchase them and our lives will be fulfilled. And we fall straight into the trap created for us and believe.

Our young people believe and become disillusioned with an ordinary life.  Disillusionment is what they really offer in those advertisements and we are being duped.

How long before we all see the light?