Less Than One Percent

I've known for decades that I am one of the persons Thoreau imagined when he wrote about marching to the sound of a different drum. I can't really hear my presumptive beat. At a minimum, I adhere to the maxim that the majority of rhythms surrounding me are to be ignored. Perhaps the loudest is the incessant beat of American consumerism. We are told that the economy is in deep trouble because Americans are not buying enough, that they are now actually saving money. It is almost as if the excesses of the last several years were normal, that excess is in fact sustainable.

I am intuitively comforted that the economy collapsed. It did not seem sustainable. I have not checked the status of what could be called my wealth: the value of my home, the value of my retirement account, the value of my savings, much of which took the form of investing in stocks. I can loosely imagine I've "lost" about half of what I thought I had. I don't take comfort in that. Yet on a larger scale, what I thought I "had" was not based on anything I had done, but on what others did: what decisions they made (to buy, or not, credit default swaps; to buy, or not, securitized mortgages; to buy, or not, that new flat screen tv). It seemed like a game outside my window, one that I watched casually, one that I didn't feel a part of.

I think: what was I thinking? I respond: I wasn't. I was bouncing almost carelessly between inaction and reaction, mostly living in the former. I have two cars: one is 9 years old, the other is 18 years old. I don't buy flat screen tv's or designer clothes or vacations. I feel like an alien when I feel compelled to accompany someone to a mall. The consumer society pounds its drums all around me—I am desperate to wear earplugs. How can a culture go forward buying endless landfills of dreck? What is moving it? What does it long for? How does it create value? How long can it last? Today is the 50th anniversary of Barbie.

If the economy were resilient, this recession/depression wouldn't be happening. It's obviously not. Who will win in the long run: resiliency or unrestricted appetite? A cancer cell offers an answer, tho one few wish for.

The photo offers another answer; love costs nothing. It won't increase GDP nor help pay down the deficit. It will, however, generate an unending supply of resiliency.