I don´t have exactly something like a Borges´s reading memory but I remembered well a passage that at the time make me somehow smile (the one where they were purchasing cheap goods at something like a navy editorial saldos). Searching for that episode I found this essay that maybe can dialogue with this post:
http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcont ... xt=pursuit
I belong from a family of inmigrants that were not very austere (one side of the family because they were little comerciantes & they did more tan the average money, allowing them to purchase services and goods that most of the people in their town lack of; the other side with little money but with a let´s call it, always spending more that they have way of mind & sharing it with people beyond the nuclear family). My parents when I was a child, in opposition, were very austere & critic & culpose about consuming things they thought they weren´t necessary and they were very nuclear focused. I´m trying to find my own equilibrio (or desequilibrio, depending on the perspective ... ): it´s not a big problem because of my austere salary & because I don´t have a family to feed , I try to enjoy what I decide to consume & if I can help with or generate some alternative & sustentable economic circuit with that, that´s simply bingo!.
It´s a fact that the mainstream economic discourse (I guess in USA postwar -and I guess it not changed too much in today´s USA) but also nowadays in a strongly way in Latinamerica is : if the sales are high, the economy is saved (the jobs and et all...). Look to this, in our most conservative newspaper (of course, they are talking about some distintive kind of consumo)
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1851683-adio ... -argentina
In the last decade I found around these lands, each time more, the necessity of talking about what we consume trying to validate the choice done: in a wide range that includes food, doctors, films, drinks, books, restaurants, ideology, fitness, sports, trips, cars, education, drugs, concerts, tecnology ... even time spent with people ... Maybe it´s a sign of the time and nobody is outside this at some moment or situation... maybe it´s a test of how much packaged experience we can bear or what else we can generate...Maybe it´s also a sign of the times to be aware of this with not so much desperation, we still have to live in this world...
A very well known here dark humor tango (a kind of anti anthem!) & a Gusman quote (from an interview also posted in our most conservative newspaper) for your rejoice! We are all lucky to live in the XXI century ...!
http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1852017-luis ... -fantasmasUno trabaja sobre lo que no funciona. Es una idea un poco lacaniana. El mundo nunca va a funcionar. No sé de dónde sacan que el mundo va a funcionar. No sé por qué debería funcionar si nunca funcionó. Lo que pasa es que ahora nos enteramos más rápido