“It’s a mystery to me,
We have a greed,
With which we have agreed
You think you have to want more
Than you need
Until you have it all
You won’t be free…”
Eddie Vedder “Society”, “Into the Wild” OST
Often when lighting a match to set a stove going I think that by this time the civilization could have thought up something better than consuming wood and all the welfare that the planet has to offer to be able to go about its daily business without damaging the universe this way or other. Consumption and as a consequence consumerism seem to be in the essence of the modern lifestyle. We buy things we might never use in the future because it happens of the spur of a moment or because we think they might come handy someday, even though we are not sure of that. We surround ourselves with countless junk, either cheap or expensive, but our lives are littered with these numerous things we buy, keep and never come to think what do we truly need them for, why does humanity use resourses to manufacture them. “I don’t need these things, things, things” Chris’s character beautifully portrayed in the ITW movie by Emile Hirsch said. This made me concentrate on why do we fetish material things and why do we always need more no matter how much we’ve got? Is this a mean to expose ourselves or prove ourselves, maybe state our vision of something? But what can be exposed, proved or stated in this sort of way? Often during my frequent acts of self-observation I encounter on the fact that I do reflect this approach towards materialism myself. I have a car, but I want another one. Sure the old car is not convenient for all my needs, but I could put in a bit more effort and keep the car thus saving myself from the need of buying a more comfortable vehicle. It’s just one of the many examples that can be brought from everyday life, whether it is me who is modeled or any other common person. But when I think about Chris I suddenly realize that I need to do something more than that, something more than exchanging things into things and then again things into things and so on without seeing the end of it. Something more, something for the soul, something permanent that can not be erased, damaged, thrown away. It has to be memories since they are the only abstract thing that one can “take with him” when the time comes, the only thing worth doing something, worth working and struggling for. Happy memories keep us going and moving along regardless of the hardships we may be facing in certain periods of our lives. Memories push us to hope that someday they will be repeated in different places and time with different people but they will arouse the same emotions that the previous memories did once occurring in real-time life. Chris was only 24 when he passed away, but his last two years have been flourishing with adventures which undoubtedly left the most cherished and dear memories in him, made him happy and gave him this vast feeling of freedom, as if any door was open, the sky was no limit or life was endless. He was out there living every second of his life in a manner that appealed to him the most, be it the dirt, a hungry evening, a penniless trip or whatever. In his letter to a grain-elevator owner and a former short-time employer Wayne Westerberg he wrote “Tramping is too easy with the money you paid me. My days were more exciting when I was penniless.” He could not have been more right. Money spoils us, makes us lazy and arrogant. When we have money we constantly think about the ways to best spend it, whereas when we don’t - we don’t care in the least since there is nothing to be spent on anything, your hands are untied and you are free to do whatever you want. I’ve always tried to understand why people need to complicate life by introducing various limits, inventing money, government, rules to be broken later. As yet the only more or less reasonable answer that I managed to find in respect to this issue is that as a mass people are disorganized. We can’t live without confrontation with someone else, we can’t live in harmony, we can’t live without regulation and fear of the consequences for breaking rules. “Why are people so bad to each other?” Why do we let the beasts in us break out at certain points and hurt others, mostly not physically too? And miraculously, why does not it haunt us that we do hurt others? Having thought about this, I am suggesting that this is exactly what turned Chris away from society: totally greedy consumerism taking hold of every aspect of human life and the unvoiced and hidden denial of deeper values like truth and love. Lately I tend to think that the society we live in is becoming too oppressive for people with a more sensitive nature, those who care, who believe that there is something more and something deeper, who want to change things and most definitely those who yearn to learn this deeper and greater meaning of life that is hidden from the immediate glance. Such people feel reduced, at least I do, to clichés as “dreamers” and are not taken seriously by the world of bankers, lawyers, accountants, brokers, politicians in their majority, for whom sentimentalism is some bad and parasitizing disease in the universe of concrete buildings and irreplaceable market economy relations. Bullshit. “Rather than love, than money, than power, than faith, than fairness… give me truth…” (Henry David Thoreau) I will never be able to find truth in money or power, neither did Chris. He found it in self-discovery and the act of granting himself the freedom necessary to complete this self-discovery, in simple life, far away from luxury majority of us chase, from noise and the hectic tempo of life. He found it in thought, something that is put in the back of our mind simply because we have no time to think about more serious issues that everyday trifles and worries...
We have a greed,
With which we have agreed
You think you have to want more
Than you need
Until you have it all
You won’t be free…”
Eddie Vedder “Society”, “Into the Wild” OST
Often when lighting a match to set a stove going I think that by this time the civilization could have thought up something better than consuming wood and all the welfare that the planet has to offer to be able to go about its daily business without damaging the universe this way or other. Consumption and as a consequence consumerism seem to be in the essence of the modern lifestyle. We buy things we might never use in the future because it happens of the spur of a moment or because we think they might come handy someday, even though we are not sure of that. We surround ourselves with countless junk, either cheap or expensive, but our lives are littered with these numerous things we buy, keep and never come to think what do we truly need them for, why does humanity use resourses to manufacture them. “I don’t need these things, things, things” Chris’s character beautifully portrayed in the ITW movie by Emile Hirsch said. This made me concentrate on why do we fetish material things and why do we always need more no matter how much we’ve got? Is this a mean to expose ourselves or prove ourselves, maybe state our vision of something? But what can be exposed, proved or stated in this sort of way? Often during my frequent acts of self-observation I encounter on the fact that I do reflect this approach towards materialism myself. I have a car, but I want another one. Sure the old car is not convenient for all my needs, but I could put in a bit more effort and keep the car thus saving myself from the need of buying a more comfortable vehicle. It’s just one of the many examples that can be brought from everyday life, whether it is me who is modeled or any other common person. But when I think about Chris I suddenly realize that I need to do something more than that, something more than exchanging things into things and then again things into things and so on without seeing the end of it. Something more, something for the soul, something permanent that can not be erased, damaged, thrown away. It has to be memories since they are the only abstract thing that one can “take with him” when the time comes, the only thing worth doing something, worth working and struggling for. Happy memories keep us going and moving along regardless of the hardships we may be facing in certain periods of our lives. Memories push us to hope that someday they will be repeated in different places and time with different people but they will arouse the same emotions that the previous memories did once occurring in real-time life. Chris was only 24 when he passed away, but his last two years have been flourishing with adventures which undoubtedly left the most cherished and dear memories in him, made him happy and gave him this vast feeling of freedom, as if any door was open, the sky was no limit or life was endless. He was out there living every second of his life in a manner that appealed to him the most, be it the dirt, a hungry evening, a penniless trip or whatever. In his letter to a grain-elevator owner and a former short-time employer Wayne Westerberg he wrote “Tramping is too easy with the money you paid me. My days were more exciting when I was penniless.” He could not have been more right. Money spoils us, makes us lazy and arrogant. When we have money we constantly think about the ways to best spend it, whereas when we don’t - we don’t care in the least since there is nothing to be spent on anything, your hands are untied and you are free to do whatever you want. I’ve always tried to understand why people need to complicate life by introducing various limits, inventing money, government, rules to be broken later. As yet the only more or less reasonable answer that I managed to find in respect to this issue is that as a mass people are disorganized. We can’t live without confrontation with someone else, we can’t live in harmony, we can’t live without regulation and fear of the consequences for breaking rules. “Why are people so bad to each other?” Why do we let the beasts in us break out at certain points and hurt others, mostly not physically too? And miraculously, why does not it haunt us that we do hurt others? Having thought about this, I am suggesting that this is exactly what turned Chris away from society: totally greedy consumerism taking hold of every aspect of human life and the unvoiced and hidden denial of deeper values like truth and love. Lately I tend to think that the society we live in is becoming too oppressive for people with a more sensitive nature, those who care, who believe that there is something more and something deeper, who want to change things and most definitely those who yearn to learn this deeper and greater meaning of life that is hidden from the immediate glance. Such people feel reduced, at least I do, to clichés as “dreamers” and are not taken seriously by the world of bankers, lawyers, accountants, brokers, politicians in their majority, for whom sentimentalism is some bad and parasitizing disease in the universe of concrete buildings and irreplaceable market economy relations. Bullshit. “Rather than love, than money, than power, than faith, than fairness… give me truth…” (Henry David Thoreau) I will never be able to find truth in money or power, neither did Chris. He found it in self-discovery and the act of granting himself the freedom necessary to complete this self-discovery, in simple life, far away from luxury majority of us chase, from noise and the hectic tempo of life. He found it in thought, something that is put in the back of our mind simply because we have no time to think about more serious issues that everyday trifles and worries...
Sometimes it takes an external factor to help you realize how cluttered your life is by things that you do not need. After living in the US (the land of consumerism in so many ways, but not the only ones) for four years, I had to put all my things into two suitcases when I was leaving, and while I had to leave a lot of things that broke my heart at the time, I also saw so many things that I had that I didn't really care for, use, or even know I had! As for the things I loved and had to let go of, sometimes I wish I still had a copy of X novel, or Y dress or something, but mostly, my life is not any emptier without those things. We have so much more than what we need, and some more than what we want, even!
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