Stop the Madness

From the time each and every one of us shoots out of our mother's womb, to the time we are old and gray, buying things is a habit ingrained in our everyday lives. In order to survive, we have basic human needs. To be fed, to be sheltered, to have adequate drinking water and perhaps most important, to be loved. Studies have shown that human beings, as infants, if left untouched by human hands, are capable of dying. People die without affection or love. Yet, are our lives structured around love?

Unfortunately, no. Our lives are structured around money and the pursuit of it. People are increasingly finding it hard to survive with a mere $1,000 or $2,000. To survive in this bloating inflation times, people claim that they need more money than ever in order to get by. Let us examine if this is true.

After attending the obligatory 11 years of school (where peer pressure is the rule and fitting in is a religion), the next natural step is to earn the almighty degree. So, influenced by friends, family, the mass media and the glossy advertisements by a particular education institution, you pick a major that you semi-believe in and then proceed to be a student for another three to five years. While I still firmly believe that education is one of the best experiences a person can have, my conviction is faltered by the money-making practices that educational institutions are now employing in order to get more students, so that they can make more money and compete with other educational institutions. The university experience is one that comes as a whole package - discovering yourself, your likes and dislikes, participating in extracurricular activities, learning new ideas in the library and going to mind-blowing lectures. But it all comes with a cost, a cost that is becoming increasingly impossible to pay for a huge percentage of people, whether middle class or not. And what I find particularly hilarious is that, the whole idea of going to university for the majority of people is to be able to secure a job after those three to five years. While that is of course, expected in today's wealth-chasing system, it defeats the original and true purpose of education: to gain knowledge for the sake of knowledge. One cannot properly educate herself if her pursuit is money and money alone.

So what's next after the revered 'Degree'? The great 'Job' of course. As soon as your lovely, independent son/daughter has graduated (perhaps even before), (s)he is pressured to find the almighty job, in order to earn the almighty dollars. It doesn't matter sometimes, if they're not ready, or if they want to sit on their bums for awhile (and really, it doesn't hurt to take a break in between the transition), no they have to beat all the other graduates who are doing the exact same thing. It is a mad rush to secure the first available job that is remotely tied to what you studied in university. And if you don't, God forbid, you are questioned, threatened, sent on a guilt-trip and forced to eventually join the mad rush because that's what society expects you to do. In Asian countries like China, Malaysia and Hong Kong, young people face the added pressure of having to worry about what the next-door neighbour might say if they saw you bumming around instead of sitting at a desk for eight hours, typing out things you don't really care about. In America, this is called 'keeping up with the Jones.' In Malaysia, it is the single most terrifying sentence a young person has to endure: "What will Aunty/Uncle/grandma/the maid's gardener say?" It is this constant pressure that will finally crack even the most laid-back carefree person to dive straight into the inane job-hunt and find something just to shut everyone up.

So what's next? You have the picture-perfect job (on the surface of course, when you hide in the loo and tear your hair out, no one knows) and you're earning what most of us will term, a 'decent' salary. Sometimes you stay later than 5 to finish off a task that again, doesn't contribute anything meaningful to your life. Then comes the pressure to buy shiny new things. A person who, say, enters the journalist office, will be pressured to buy a Blackberry (to check work e-mails), or to at the very least, possess a Smart phone. This is not an anti-technological stance, mind you. I have nothing against technology. I think it is the single greatest invention ever created by mankind. But it has created (like anything in the monetary system) a constant pressure for people to buy and own the latest gadgets. It's very simple - if you don't think your life will be greatly improved by a piece of metal, then you don't have to give in. But often what will happen is that, the fresh graduate will look around at everyone else with the coveted Blackberry or with the cute Peugeot and vow to be able to afford it some day. You don't have to buy into this.

I have experienced this first-hand at my old job. The moment I got my first paycheck, colleagues would furtively glance at my beat-up second-hand car and whisper that I could get huge discounts off a brand-new car, all under the guise of being part of the media. Tempting isn't it? But then I looked at the weariness in their eyes, and the way some of them stayed in the office until late, putting in overtime just so they could pay off their car loans, house loans and whatever else they thought they couldn't survive without and vowed not to join the rat race.

You might laugh in my face and say that no matter what, I will eventually get dragged into it or something will make me want to possess all the grandeur that we see everyday. You might be right and perhaps someday you will scoff in my face. But I don't see the need to join this mad struggle. Do you? What kind of benefit will it bring me if I owned a better phone than the one I currently have? Will I radiate prestige and power? Will I smell like new money? And if yes, will I become a better person by owning a better phone? Gladly, I can assure you that the last statement is far from the truth. I might reek of dollar bills, but I really don't want to. Especially since I'll be so broke from paying for my new phone, I will only have the illusion of reeking like dollar bills. The truth will be that I won't be able to afford the simple pleasures of life because I was too busy chasing the idea of prestige.

So what's with the constant pressure? Is it true that the farther you climb the corporate ladder, the more things you have to own? If I start making more money in about three months, am I expected to own better clothes? The truth is, this is just another fitting-in scheme that dictates the lifestyle of an urban yuppie living in today's world. It is the same peer pressure that dictated high school and unfortunately, it is also fabricated by the same people who would look down on you if you don't have what they have.

Right now, when you go into a Starbucks to drink coffee, not only are you being sold ripped-off coffee, you are also being sold, "the Starbucks experience." According to Naomi Klein, the marketing department at Starbucks know it is the whole reality that counts, and not simply the coffee, or the mug the coffee comes in. You are dazzled by the comforting deco in Starbucks, lulled by the friendly baristas and seduced by the pretty stuffed couches on the cozy hardwood floor. Don't fret, I've been seduced too, especially since I've been in a Starbucks where they advertised a Billy Holiday CD at the front counter. The people at Starbucks packaged a different realm of consciousness as the Starbucks experience and you cannot say that it didn't work. The marketing world has stopped pushing products, they have started pushing ideal lifestyles that look and feel so lush, so beautiful and so irresistible. And it worked. And you know what? We're not stopping to think about any of this because this is the way life has been for a long time.

There is no need to stop and think when everything looks just fine and dandy. I'm strolling into Starbucks on a Saturday afternoon with a good friend and willingly paying RM12 (approximately USD3 plus government tax) for whipped cream, coffee and flavoured-syrups. What's wrong with that, you might ask? Why can't I enjoy my coffee, one I decidedly earned, after working five out of seven days a week? You can, because you don't know how the coffee was made, and where it came from. You might have heard something about it being produced in poor countries, but all that is in the back of your head as you take your first sip and savour the excellent combination. And then all is forgotten.

It is sad that we are not products of our imagination, or education. We are products of society, one that is inundated with things, possessions and more possessions. Our generation has not been educated by useful knowledge, but by the television. Our brothers and sisters might be very tech-savvy but they were also brought up on a diet of advertisements, product placements and told how to fit in best.

So what's the solution? Should we all just turn of the television? Well no, because everything is shifting over to the Internet, so it can't be avoided. Then, what, we stop utilizing the Internet? No, we can't because we've become pretty dependent on it and it is a very powerful tool of communicating ideas. Then what?

I suggest the simplest of all solutions. Think before you decide to buy anything. Because the absolute truth is that owning things will not and never make you happy. It might buy you a certain status with your peers and your colleagues but you will be emptier than before. It might buy you temporary happiness, especially if it's something you love. But all I ask you to do, is think hard and long before you make a purchase. Because if you truly don't have a need for it, don't succumb to the enormous built-in pressure that surrounds objects. Only buy to cater to your basic needs and nothing else.

The other day, I looked around my room and saw all the junk in it for what it truly was: clutter, waste of space and useless. Unfortunately, all that junk is going to have to find a place under the earth as we contribute to the growing pile of garbage on our planet. Let us stop the madness, before it threatens to consume us.