Suckcess

After the depression and World War II, it is understandable that the fervent goal of our parents was to attain financial security. They strove to have a home of their own, a yard, a car, a TV set and maybe even a vacation every now and then.
But what happens when you get everything you focused on for 30 years? What happens when you get the things that will make you secure, if not happy. You can’t alter your focus after all these years, especially when no one alerts you that have now “arrived” and you can slow down a bit.
So, the only thing to do is to keep on keepin on. As your pay and benefits grow, the obvious thing to do is get a bigger house, another car, more TV sets, more food, more adult toys; something to fill up the psychic hole, if you will. What else to do? As Eddie Izzard said, “The goal of all Americans is to get all the money in the world and stuff it in your ears and give the raspberries to everybody else”
We have reached a point where people have many huge cars carrying one person, numerous electronic toys, computers, ATVs, etc., etc. And above all, we have food. We buy pizzas with extra cheese in the crust because, apparently, there’s not enough in the pizza. We eat hamburgers big enough to feed a small tribe of villagers. We have become enormously fat people looking for the next fix.
Because of that, we have a list of trendy diets that grows each day. Woman’s magazines contain recipes followed by diet plans followed by recipes. What would a Somali farmer think about diet plans? Being overweight is not a problem he has considered.
The potent combination of capitalism, credit cards and resources has been Too Successful. It got us what we wanted and when we got there, there was nowhere to go, so we went for more. The hippies warned about it in the sixties but now most of them have joined the club.
I see a small percentage of Americans are attempting to be sensible about food and possessions. Generally though, if we continue on this course, we will, as a culture, rot from within like an overripe melon.