Everywhere I go I bring along those 'not enough' voices in my head.
How do you extinguish them?
Not an all-inclusive list, but:
- Turn off the TV. That's the best advice I can give anyone. Turn it off.
TV has one purpose: to sell you stuff. It does that by making you feel inadequate –– not sexy enough, not affluent enough, not smart enough, not exciting enough –– in the hope you'll buy some SUV or living room furniture or ab blaster to compensate for the perceived shortcomings the tube has instilled in you. No one but Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can afford all the stuff, so eventually you're bound to feel inadequate. Television is evil, evil, evil.
(This from someone who watched Red Freakin' Dawn last night.) - Stay out of shopping malls and Edmond for the same reason.
- Friends don't let friends find fault. Anyone who regularly tells you what you 'need' to do is really trying to give themselves a sense of superiority over you. (But note the word regularly. Don't reject all advice. I, for example, am a fount of profound, insightful wisdom.
And... I'm a bundle of energy, always on the go!) - Get a bunch of cats, and learn from them.
One of the reasons I'm entertaining this Cold Mountain fantasy (or maybe not a fantasy) is because it would further insulate me and isolate me from the barrage of 'not good enough/buy this' messages to which I'm exposed every day. I'm pretty far removed from what constitutes 'consumer society' already, and I still feel like I'm in a blizzard of marketing crap.
In the early days of Taoism, I guess, politics was the big marketing tool. Government service was the measure for success. The tests for government service included such things as physical attractiveness and skill in poetry, so there was some incentive to conform in word, appearance and deed.
That's part of the reason the Boys Named Tzu urged people to avoid government service. It was just a big con to get one to sacrifice spirituality in favor of commercialism, rumormongering and backbiting. Now we have TV and other mass media for that.
The sages went off and lived in Luther, Jones and Choctaw to get away from the crap.
2 comments:
It used to be "cool" if you were DIFFERENT. Now, to be cool you must drive a BMW, wear Armani, be seen at the right places, etc. Cool is CONFORMITY. I don't want to be American cool.
To the best of my ability I will be myself today. I will wear my comfortable thrift store jeans and my t-shirt with no bra. No makeup, perfume or jewelry. I will drive a Pontiac because I like it. My one room existence will take no time to clean and much less to insure and heat/cool than a house. I will have much less stress than my neighbors because I will not watch TV or charge anything on a credit card. I am not cool and I do not care.
Edmond is double trouble as one can enter an Ann Taylor store bypassing all malls. Talk about evil! I’ve been sucked into that abyss before.
When I think about TV, I only have 2 shows I watch and one of them is horribly wretched to my soul…Nip/Tuck. Perhaps if I get another cat I will be distracted and not be inclined to watch all that vanity.
Wait a minute…aren’t cats vain creatures? Or are they just OCD?
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