A basic part of American life is striving. One is urged to try to improve. In the first half of life, that urge fits well with getting set and settled. We manage to keep churn and turmoil going, updating, upgrading. We tend to be addicted to the feeling of excitement, novelty and progress of one sort or another.
One sign of excess is things piling up, whether they are piling up in the dresser drawer, on the bookshelf or in the garage. As I visit different commercial web sites, I am often assaulted by an offer to buy something that appears on top of another offer that just popped up. Before I can read an ad, a different ad appears on top of what I am reading. I certainly don't have time to read something completely before something else appears. So, things are piling up: offers, ads, exhortations, implications that a good citizen, a happy person, a lively guy would buy.
I wasn't paying attention when they changed speech from communication to encouragement to purchase products large and small from one and all. "You have a beautiful hat" has been changed into "You have a beautiful hat and I can let you have an even better one at a temporarily reduced price that is only available in the next ten minutes." "No smoking" has been changed into "No smoking here at this time unless you purchase a smoking license". "No dogs" has been changed into "Dogs are not happy here without our doggie jackets and booties, available to club members today only at 53% off." You can see that the new form of utterance and communication involves longer messages just when our citizens have less time to receive anything and less patience with anything that takes up their precious few minutes.
A local store used to have a card on the main front counter that read "Congratulations! You have won our contest. 100 bison will be delivered to your front lawn tomorrow morning." Whether it is 100 bison or 50 cars or 25 bikes, there is an amount that is excess and we know it. We are more likely to be hooked on a little spike of pleasure. We spend enough for one bike, we make a down payment on one car, we get a loan for one buffalo and we feel uplifted. Not a lot but enough to think we are climbing the ladder of success.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
