Buyer's Remorse

I'd like to share another few bits of thought on the election, now that it has had time to gestate in my brain. It's certainly a strange mood in America right now - people either seem relieved and slightly optimistic or terrified, convinced the sky is going to come crashing down and that the sky is a socialist. People legitimately think that this is the end of America. The place is certainly different, and will get stranger, but let's face it, this is a pretty strange place. If you need a good model for America, go to the supermarket and look at all the food and foodlike substances on the shelves. There is abundance of everything, some of it is healthy, most of it is nourishing, and many things will cause cancer or birth defects. Most of that stuff is strange. Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper? Country Crock? Chicken injected with saline solution to make it a little more... well... more of it? How the hell do they make those things? It's beautiful and miraculous but yes, you do have a right to be afraid of what kinds of crazy things will be for sale there four years later, or, for that matter, what your kids will see at the supermarket. Ham in a Pillsbury dough tube? Spray-on tomatoes? I don't know, but there will be a lot of it, and it will be better than the alternative, which is no food. And somehow, our bodies will make it work.

And, for my conservative friends out there, don't worry about the fate of the Republican Party. It will live on, because the one who need the Republican Party the most is the Democratic Party. And vice-versa. They need each other to survive. But I won't get into my theory on that.

The most heartening piece of news to come out of the election, though, isn't about who won. It's not actually one specific race either. It's actually eight candidates who lost. And no, they are not the "rape ones." These were the eight candidates whose campaigns received funding from Sheldon Adelson, who made the single largest donation in political history. Adelson's Super PAC funded Romney and seven other Republican candidates, all of whom were defeated Tuesday night.

I'll admit, I'm worried about corporate influence on elections, and the rise of the Super PACs. And I legitimately thought that it was going to be the end of American Democracy a few years ago when the limit on corporate campaign contributions was raised to infinity dollars. But hey, looks like there's just not enough capital out there to pump into the elections to make them all go your way. Yes, in California we still have to unknowingly eat ham from hyperpigs thanks to corporate financial backing to those opposing prop 37. I'm not naive enough to believe that all corporate political financing can be undermined with simply the free spirits and smiles of the American people. What we did learn was that more money doesn't always yield more votes.

That alone gives me more hope than the '08 model of Obama. It sends the message that votes aren't commodities. Consumer culture is based on the principle that more money will get you more of the things you want. And everything you have you will eventually want again or want more of, because things will break, things will become obsolete, and usually they are engineered to do so.

It's easy to make people no different from commodities in this framework. Our bodies break down after a certain time fighting gravity and entropy. And eventually it's all going to fall apart. But I hope that our hearts and minds can be in a separate category, intrinsically, from the stuff we buy. A part of remaining that way is by sending the message that we are more than consumers, more than pieces of data in an economic model. And we need not to be consumed by our consumption. Cherish the things you have as unique, your own things. Make things, repair things, borrow things, share things, if you can do any of those at the expense of buying things. I know, you've heard this so many times. But it all ties together, consumer culture and maintaining our freedom. Because you don't need to be oppressed to not be free. In this free market society we're slaves to our stuff, or our desire for stuff. And of course, we must realize that there is something left after our bodies break down; we are more than commodities. That question, of course, has to be answered by spiritual inquiry. And while I believe I have a pretty good idea of what that looks like, this isn't my platform to preach it.

Because this is the Ozone Shack. [Cock Joke] Never take it too seriously.