Black Friday has arrived again and with it the YouTube videos of mass scrums of desperate bargain hunters risking life and limb to find happiness in discounted knickknacks unaffordable otherwise.
The true insanity of our age will be defined by how an object of little to no relevance will suddenly gain value the minute its value is reduced. This most toxic of traditions will almost certainly have future anthropologists making comparisons to human sacrifices of pagan times.
It’s impossible to escape the build-up either. With adverts on every media available proclaiming the savings one can make, the purchases of a lifetime, the offers of Pre-Black Friday sales, buy, buy, buy.
What does this say about us as a species? That at a time of year when we should be celebrating a hope for peace on earth and good will to all, we are so easily distracted by the promise of half price self-gratification, with barely a thought for the lowly paid production worker, the warehouse run-a-bout or the delivery person, or with families, all putting themselves at risk of contracting the deadly coronavirus killing its way through our society, to deliver what will mostly end up in a landfill by the next Black Friday and the ocean the following.
Fun fact: Nothing ever created will last longer than plastic. This includes the joyful look on your child’s face when they open that off-brand Super-Hero toy, made under the subhuman conditions of a far East sweatshop by a small child their exact age.
Black Friday represents a sad gullibility in all of us. An idea has lodged itself in our communal psyche, fostered by generations of predatory advertising, the idea an object can solve an emotion, when the fact that Black Friday happens every year is proof of the exact opposite. You cannot buy yourself happiness even at a significant discount.
Wanstead Climate Action 