Saturday, November 26, 2011

Information for Consumptive People

After watching the long, long lines of eager shoppers who were completely happy to ditch Thanksgiving/rest/family to line up for hours for bargains, I started looking around for some way to wrap my head around that level of consumer motivation. 

It...um...doesn't seem healthy.

Then I remembered something.  Consumption?  Wasn't consumption once a disease?

And lo and behold, I found this handy-dandy poster.  It reminds us that consumption is an infection, and provides some interesting but somewhat dated suggestions for preventing the spread of consumption in our culture. 

For the current version of that plague, I'm not sure that we've got to worry quite as much about the disposal of spittle.  But some of the suggestions still hold.

Like, say, the reminder that intemperance...that means living out of balance, as I read it...is one major cause of consumption.  Living in dark dwellings, particularly those illuminated only by the light of cable TV or the glow of your laptop?  That's got to be a contributing factor.

I like this recommendation, too:

REMEMBER that FRESH AIR and SUNSHINE are the greatest enemies of consumption and will often cure it when not too far advanced.

That would get you away from the ads and the market propaganda for a while.  

You know, I think that just might work. Assuming we're not all too far gone.