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The 8GB Thumb Drive; A Classic Case of the Lures of Consumerism
By Life-Musings.com | January 11, 2009
The modern world today is one of extreme consumerism, a culture which is doing its part to exploit the third world as well as kill Mother Earth. Consciously or, probably as is the case for most of us, subconsciously, we are fuelling this culture by our actions and habits.
I have a recent personal experience which somewhat illustrates this point.
I was at a shop 2 weeks back, and saw a flash thumb drive – it was an 8GB thumb drive, and it was going for $29.
Cool, I thought. But at the same time, I was also thinking about how passé my own thumb drives had become, and how I had paid so much more for so much less.
You see, I had bought my first thumb drive about 3 years ago; it only had 500MB of space, and it cost me something like $80 or $90 then. My second thumb drive had a lot more space, 2GB, and it was a lot cheaper too, costing me maybe $40 to $50.
But now, both of those drives seemed so inadequate in the face of the 8GB one staring at me now. I was yearning for it. After all, it’s huge, and SO CHEAP - I could put so many things in there!…
Then it struck me. I am still using the 2GB one, and I have barely only filled half of it. Based on my current needs, I do not NEED the 8GB one at all. But the companies have somehow managed to make me FEEL like I need the 8GB one; they have managed to make me think my 2GB thumb drive is obsolete. In reality, that is far from the truth. I walked away.
The case in point is about my meeting with thumb drives. But the creation of new and false needs dominates virtually all areas of commercialism. Handbags, shoes, computers, MP3 players, mobile phones… you name it.
Such temptations and false desires, where the supply of stuffs creates artificial demand in the human psyche, is the hallmark of consumerism today. And it’s causing us to plunder Mother Earth and the creation of mountainous amounts of waste.
It’s frightening.
Then I had another thought - if I were a company, whose sole purpose is to reap profits, with little or no regard for the wellbeing of people or that of the Earth (and this is something, I have to say, which applies to most huge profit-driven corporations, even those which supposedly deal with “helping” niche areas), even if I have just invented a 100GB thumb drive, I would NOT sell it straightaway.
I would first sell a 1GB drive, then a year later, a 2GB drive, then another year later, a 4GB drive, etc. This way, I get to make money off the same suckers over and over again.
Yes – suckers.
Sadly, we are all suckers in this world of consumerism today.
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Topics: All Life Musings, Everyday Life, Modern Life, The Human Psyche |