Black Friday

Having never been a consumer-lemming, I have to confess that I did not know this day was called Black Friday until a few days ago.

Really.

Before this year, if anyone had quizzed me on what Black Friday is, I would have told them that it referred to some financial disaster of some sort that occurred either in the early years of the 20th century, or late in the 19th century.

(I had to look it up, and it's in reference to a gold speculators' scheme that went sour on 9-24-1869, and led to the collapse of the gold market.)

I suppose you could compare that sort of panic to the emotional states of people who end up getting trampled when they open the doors to the places of retail worship on the day after Thanksgiving.

The Cathedrals of Consumerism, if they had any organized ideological sense, would dub this day Good Friday... but, unfortunately for them, the moniker has already been taken by another denomination.

I expect that, not too far into the future, George Lucas' prophetic film, "THX-1138", will be ripped off for that authoritative voice over loudspeakers in every mall, droning out the words, "Buy now... Buy more... and... Be Happy."

Within the universal tableaux of context, I suppose, we can't really expect much more than this sort of thing in dealing with the ever-increasing numbers of human bodies being produced on an annual basis. There has to be a fairly widespread, agreed upon ideological basis for societal behavior in a wildly burgeoning planetary population. Consumerism seems to work to that end surprisingly well, in terms of what, exactly, most people are willing to agree with. (And I'm not talking about how to find ways that everybody can get along, here. I'm talking about population control.)

This schema is much more widely accepted than any other religion or ideology, by simple demonstration. With a fiat currency long in place, the Cathedrals of Consumerism have become the de-facto interdenominational places of worship for the society at large.

If you are in any way spiritually or religiously inclined, this really should make your skin crawl.

Basically, ...if you're well-adjusted these days, then you're just not paying attention.