Obesity and $600 Headphones
I confess; I don't care that much about the quality of the sound my electronics produce.
As proof, I'll just point out that when we bought our Honda mini-van, I was amazed at how good the stock sound system was. At home, we have an old ten-year-old TV and I haven't seen much need to spend money on a sound system for it (or even get a new TV), so the surround-sound system that came with car impressed me.
So, today as I watched people discuss headphones that retail for $100 to $600, I was a little taken aback. I'm just not used to making large purchases (where "large" is anything more than $75) for personal entertainment. Dropping a few hundred on my monitor was a big stretch for me. I was happy to do it, but I had to change my mindset a little.
(Don't let me fool you, though. I tend to be a spendthrift -- historically I've not been very good at managing my money. I just don't buy $600 headphones.)
Anyway, this being Lent (still, for us Orthodox, but "Happy Easter" to the rest of you), I started think about this when I read what Fr Stephen wrote in his blog post titled The Passion to Consume:
And this is why spiritual askesis like fasting is so important.
By fasting from particular foods, I become more concious of the food I do eat. How much am I eating? Why am I eating? In the same way, I can limit my indulgence in TV and I start asking "Why am I watching this? How much have I watched?'
But any attempt to remain free of desire, to abstain, is completely counter-cultural. We often see it as an unnatural act. Why put an in-human effort into being uncomfortable?
You can even see this in the discussion of Wikipedia's Asceticism page that I linked to. Instead of seeing Asceticism as the self-empowering act that it is, people think it is self-destructive and anti-human.
Indulgence has become our natural state. Any exercise of will-power is ridiculed.
And we wonder why America has an obesity crisis.
As proof, I'll just point out that when we bought our Honda mini-van, I was amazed at how good the stock sound system was. At home, we have an old ten-year-old TV and I haven't seen much need to spend money on a sound system for it (or even get a new TV), so the surround-sound system that came with car impressed me.
So, today as I watched people discuss headphones that retail for $100 to $600, I was a little taken aback. I'm just not used to making large purchases (where "large" is anything more than $75) for personal entertainment. Dropping a few hundred on my monitor was a big stretch for me. I was happy to do it, but I had to change my mindset a little.
(Don't let me fool you, though. I tend to be a spendthrift -- historically I've not been very good at managing my money. I just don't buy $600 headphones.)
Anyway, this being Lent (still, for us Orthodox, but "Happy Easter" to the rest of you), I started think about this when I read what Fr Stephen wrote in his blog post titled The Passion to Consume:
To be fully human does not include becoming a passive receptacle to marketing forces ... few ages have lived as we do now in which the passions are actively used as a means to maintain the very affluence of the culture.A day or two later, as if to illustrate the point pefectly, I came across this quote in a Wired profile of Apple and Steve Jobs:
No other company has proven as adept at giving customers what they want before they know they want it.This sort of thinking has become habitual for us. What new thing can I desire today?
And this is why spiritual askesis like fasting is so important.
By fasting from particular foods, I become more concious of the food I do eat. How much am I eating? Why am I eating? In the same way, I can limit my indulgence in TV and I start asking "Why am I watching this? How much have I watched?'
But any attempt to remain free of desire, to abstain, is completely counter-cultural. We often see it as an unnatural act. Why put an in-human effort into being uncomfortable?
You can even see this in the discussion of Wikipedia's Asceticism page that I linked to. Instead of seeing Asceticism as the self-empowering act that it is, people think it is self-destructive and anti-human.
Indulgence has become our natural state. Any exercise of will-power is ridiculed.
And we wonder why America has an obesity crisis.
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