interesting post on zero hedge blog

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-devolution-consumer-economy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+(zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero)

For some reason I seem to be stumbling on ideas like this a lot lately --- and they're resonating.

I particularly like this comment (emphasis is mine):

For those of you who haven't read 'Walden' by Henry David Thoureau, it is highly recommended.

I can't possibly do it justice with a brief summary, but one of its main reflections is that by reducing the itemized list of things we need, we realize the superfluous crap we don't, and thus don't have to painfully slave away time and energy on unpleasant experiences to obtain such unecessary things.

As for credit, the advent of credit cards, home equity lines of credit, reverse mortgages - all of these things fuel irrational consumption and create hundreds of millions of debt slaves in the U.S.

Commercial advertisements, slick and glossy, appealing to Id & Ego of man, tapped the 'want' culture, driving people to lives of misery in order to worship the new religion of staying ahead of or at least keeping up with the Smiths and Jones.

Debt slaves. We are a nation of debt slaves. Most people have but one or two true passions and talents, and instead of cultivating them and pursuing them, we expend time and energy on anti-passions in order to obtain shit we don't need and that only makes us more unhappy and distant from our passions, so we're not perceived as falling behind based on the subjective, and mostly incredibly irrational/superficial opinions of others.