The Life Expectancy of Inanimate Objects

My Hi-Mountain rucksack finally breathed its last yesterday outside Asda in spite of that nice cobbler in the Savoy Centre the other week fixing the busted zips for free. At least it died a 'natural death', having lived a full 6 years from its purchase in Warsaw back in October 2006. Granted, its last few months were marred with 'rucksackthritis' and the general malaise of old age but it still meant a lot to me. I placed it respectfully into the recycle bin at Asda, said a silent prayer, and transferred my shopping into a plastic bag (that Asda is still not charging for).

All too often the life expectancy of inanimate objects (is anything really 'inanimate'?) is cut short as they are discarded and rejected, abused and neglected, more often than not through simple boredom and the seductive calling of those unscrupulous shopping Sirenes for more more more. These objects are effectively, in being prematurely discarded, buried alive, and cut down in their prime. I, personally, believe that things should decay naturally, to see my t-shirts and rucksacks fall off of me before I allow another my company. Vanity and narcissism, however, are big business, and sometimes with all the bombardment that we receive (Satan comes in many guises) it's difficult to resist. We allow ourselves to be convinced that it's worth it, and therein lies the fall.

Clothes shopping (its seduction and manipulation of man, woman and now child) is the great disease of the modern world encouraging waste and a frivolous (if not completely pathologic) attitude towards these things that help us on our way (and by extension to the people who manufacture and sell them). The ramifications of this blase attitude (that is, if your brain is still capable of joining the dots) is sweat shops, child exploitation, and nothing short of modern day slavery. In other words, our unbridled consumption of things that, let's face it, we simply do not need, (how many pairs of shoes or bags does one actually need?), effects our complicity within the exploitation of not just our own kind but myriad species that co-exist alongside us through the exploitation of their habitat. This is effectively the double-standard of the society we live in. On the one hand we proclaim ourselves 'civilized' whilst on the other we 'rape' and 'pillage' for the sake of profit. Yet our cavalier attitude prevails because at every turn it is simply encouraged, even demanded. If you look like a tramp, then you are obviously less of a human being, maybe a sociopath. Clothes, after all, maketh the man, no? Perhaps more significantly, though less obviously to the brainwashed ignoramuses with closets full of clothes, the flipside of this encouragement of 'having' is the discouragement of simply 'being'. 'Cultivation runs to simplicity' wrote the philosopher-martial artist Bruce Lee in his Tao of Jeet Kune Do, 'half-way cultivation runs to ornamentation and adornment.'

At the moment, 25th November, I am appalled at the radio presenters (Classic FM) already talking about Christmas shopping as if it were a vital necessity that they could not live without. But then, most of these radio stations will readily sell themselves out to the highest bidder. Just listen (really listen!) to some of the adverts out there, which are not only becoming more regular and rapacious, but more offensive to the simplicity of 'being'. It's a pandemic, a clear-cut case of  'incitement to metaphysical hatred' that is so deviously concealed beneath jingles and fake smiles that no-one has the slightest clue of the deeper goings-on. And yet part of us can't help but know it, yet we just go along with it, with the burden of convention upon us, go with the frivolous flow like dead fish.

I can recall not so long ago watching the exquisite production of the life of Francis of Assisi, Brother Sun Sister Moon, by Franco Zefferelli. It is simply a wonderful film that everyone should watch at some point in their lives (preferably when they're younger) and pay close attention to. There is a scene not far into the film when Francis, having returned from war (and seen through the darkness of greed into the light of simplicity), realizes how spendthrift and wasteful his father is. In a moment of sheer being (some might say impetuousness) he gathers his father's damask robes and begins to hurl them from the window of the belltower. He then strips off his own clothes and goes out into the square, naked, to be taunted by the villagers and beaten by his father. Naturally, the people think him mad and request that the bishop (who himself is adorned with so much cloth and bling that he has to be carried) do something about it. It's a very telling scene that has a deep resonance today, and which, sadly, will continue to do so until we realize the intrinsic value of being over the extrinsic value of having. The sparrows that we so associate with St. Francis are themselves metaphors of this ethereal 'living lightly'.

A wise man once said that all sin is simply that which is unnecessary. Is it not about time you seriously asked yourself: do I actually need this? Is it a matter of life and death, or am I simply being carried away by the song of the Sirenes into that dark land of having and heaviness?

  
   5.8.2005 - 26.10. 2009  R.I.P