Glittering Commodities

You can be as sceptical as you like about your susceptibility to materialism's gleaming surface. I know I am, most of the time. I look at all those people in shopping centre car parks, blindly grasping at whatever happens to be on the bargain rack in a futile attempt to convince themselves that it's all important. I'm not like that. Advertising doesn't work on me.

And then one day, I get it into my mind that I absolutely must have a particular object or other, and I find out (again) that the impulse is shockingly close to the core of my soul. In this case, it was a TV -- and then, of course, all the magnificent and absolutely necessary accessories that go with it.

Being fully on board in this case -- looking at speaker package deals uncharacteristically late at night, in the interests of shaving off a hundred bucks or so off my coveted 5.1 dream system -- makes me think that the feelings many people get from shopping on a regular basis might be worth it after all.

What I mean is: a common criticism of consumerism as an ethos is that it is only fleetingly satisfying. After all, no sooner have you purchased the latest model of car, say, than you crave the next one. Chasing a concrete object is a doomed quest, because your disappointment is engineered into your lust.

Still. The chase, if it's prolonged in a productive way, can bring a lot of pleasure. I can understand the perils of being able to have anything and everything you want straight away --  King Midas and Co. taught us that pretty well when we were kids. Yet if there's a temporary barrier between you and your chosen object, then perhaps the pleasant time spent imagining its reality is valuable in itself.

Since purchasing the TV -- which I spent several months beforehand mentally placing in a corner of the lounge -- I am now engaged in the same activity with the speaker system. Drawing pictures of speakers in the air has amused me greatly, to the point where I have to remind myself to think of more pressing matters when absolutely necessary.

I understand that I'm channeling intentions and focusing my resources onto hypothetical lumps of wood and plastic. But I'm still letting my imagination roam happily among the always-open, fully-stocked 'On Sale' aisle of the mind.