charlie & the gluttony factory

[knip]

i like my stuff, and i've got lots of it




i read a few weeks ago that if you have a bank account, you are automatically a member of the richest top 10% in the world...it's all relative, i suppose

[Doreen Peri]

Simplify. Get rid of the dead weight. Who needs all that stuff?

Well spoken, oGloriousOne.

I'm going to do the same.

I feel most free and easy when I'm traveling. One duffle bag of clothes and a toothbrush. What more do I need?

I would love to travel the world and live in hotels for the rest of my life. No belongings.

I don't think my belongings could be called gluttony, though. I think they would more aptly be called unnecessary accumulation.

[e_dog]

the surest sign of American decadence is the fact that obesity is consider an epidemic.

the vow of the ascetic artist or religious figure is equivalent in its equivocality to the physical struggle of the sportsman -- it can be training for times of adversity or else an egoistic mockery of true suffering/conflict.

[hester_prynne]

Nothing joyous about the horror of random, faultless, desperate downsizing.

But it does lead to incredible inner resources that might never have been tapped into had I been able to live on in the security I had so foolishly taken for granted, that's for sure.

I look at all the folks, still being who I used to be, living how I used to live, mortgages wracked with 30 years of interest, paychecks robbed by a government that doesn't even have a clue about you, much less a care. Ownership is real folly we trustingly just accept. It's all someone else's dream, someone else's design, inflicted on us.

Now, a new dream is building.
I like it much better. It's freer. It's more my own.

I share what I have, when I have, as best I can.
It's the only thing that makes sense.
H

[Rat Bag]

Rdog,

Good to see your face.
Got into a little trouble at AC, did we? It's not hard to do.

How long are you in jail for?
They wanted me to beg to get back in. Ha! not in this lifetime

yeh, a little trouble, I guess ya could say. No begging from this quarter either, tho. No crying. No penance. It's all good. Moving forward and onward and upward.

[mtmynd]

knip - do you have lots of stuff or just enough..?

[AQuestion]

yeah I got lots and lots of stuff...too much stuff...at one point I realized that I needed to change a lot of things about myself, and one of them happens to be my tendency to collect and hold on to (god forbid I end up like my mother with all her twenty of every type of thingie you could ever think of! )

THese days I prefer collecting people and holding on to shared personal encounters

though, I must say (a moment of sympathy for mom and other packrabbits I guess...) , quite a lot of the stuff has provided very significant meaning that has complemented my psychological growth. maybe sounds ridiculous or even impossible, seeing as most situations where you've got someone with too much stuff indicate that something is wrong. BUt this is not always the case...

I would argue that whether or not one finds 'downsizing' liberating or not is all relative...

isn't it possible that one might find owning a lot of stuff, liberating?

I mean, do we need so many of the things that we buy? naw...probably not. Many of the 'things' are not requisites for survival by any means.

but you're talking about the 'sicker' side of consumption...the point where it gets out of hand...the point of too much, reached via an untamed and likely super irrational voraciousness

( I know that that's a strong word and I admit that when I think about going to the store for like, a new something that I don't necessarily need but could have because it's cool looking, I don't think of my desire to buy equating to a voracious consuming attitude...nor do I think that of other shoppers that I see walking around the store...it's like, we've come to a point where we've normalized/justified and inside of that, we are not able to realize just how out of control we've gotten)



the gluttonous way of living that exists in some places of the world is scary and sick, but the fact that it exists is a valuable resource for learning about ourselves...and learning is a good thing, right? Part of the process of whatever it is we're all in together...


sorry to ramble on

glad you posted this

even more interested in seeing that movie now

[e_dog]

Supersize Me?

anybody seen that movie -- has it affected yr food eating habits?

[stilltrucking]

I don't own the shoes on my feet.

I know I said walk a mile in my shoes but I was only being metaphorical. I been fortunae to have many homes over the past couple decades, cut loose of everything I owned in Virginia except what I could fit into a Mazda Protege. Pretty detached to most of my stuff except for the books, I must have had a couple of hundred pounds of books in that car, and a couple of lamps.

I been going on the program if I have not used it in six months get rid of it, old tv's, computers, printers, etc took a Pickup lood to the Good Will box. Today I discovered a hug pile of winter clothes behind my bedroom door. Blankets and stuff like that. My electric bill been outrageous now I can use a blanket instead of a curtain to keep warm.

Hester I ain't figured out that "if you are so smart why ain't you rich." I got no complaint against the rich, as long as they pay there share. Got dam tax time this week, got file quaterly, self employed, death and taxes, just glad the taxman don't take it all.
yeah cool post GA