On Saturday morning my Baha'i tutor and I met at a coffee shop. I will call my tutor Yemen for purposes of this blog. Because she had this cool bracelet on that her sister bought her from Yemen.
We sat by the window through which splendid rays of morning sun broke and cast light on our skin and in our eyes. Somehow, owed to a scripture passage, the discussion arrived at coveting. And how as media grows and the world shrinks, the United States defines the increasingly global idea of success in the manner that is our material culture foists upon the world the illusion of Western success. The new iPad, iPhone, shiny new car, big house, trendy clothing. Get more stuff = appear successful = believe yourself happy.
Such that in developing countries where the people used to believe success was a different matter, or an indigenous way of life, the ideas of many people across the world are evolving towards a belief that success is what the United States conveys that it is.
Yemen told me that she has a friend that works in conservation for a global non-profit. That this friend relayed to her that in China, where a burgeoning middle class rapidly shifts world economic and ecological impact, ivory is a symbol of success and therefore, highly coveted.
China's hunger for ivory is fueling the poaching of elephants across the world, according to her friend. Projections by some, that I can't cite to here because I have not personally researched it, this is thus hearsay, have wild elephants disappearing entirely from our earth by the end of the coming decade.
Okay right, maybe the United States is not telling everyone to go out and get themselves some ivory, but the U.S. certainly loudly demonstrates how to expensively objectify success.
Pass the vodka.
I know, i hear you, everyone seems to want more and more stuff, then stuff to care for the stuff. We all need to go do some volunteer work to put the wanting-of-more in perspective. To tame that monster.
ReplyDeleteYup. And it's such an empty concept.
ReplyDelete