Acquisition

The human drive to acquire is insanely strong, and there's no period more obvious than during the Christmas season. Whenever I hear about Black Friday mad rushes where people literally fight to acquire something that they don't necessarily need, I am reminded at just how much humans really are herd animals and just basically take their cues from others.

I witness the idiocy of pepper spraying other shoppers to get a purchase, or fighting over discounted paper towels, and figure that the people probably don't really require the items. The purchase can be made later, and I'm reasonably sure that paper towels aren't Christmas presents or even really essential during Christmas...unless you need a lot of them for a dinner for whatever reason. While cases of need undoubtedly exist, I think a lot of it can be attributed to the building hype leading up to the season, after which all hell breaks loose when people suddenly realize that they are in competition with all those other increasingly impatient customers pent up outside the store.

This can be seen equally clearly in the case of keeping up with the Joneses, where people gather prestige items just to "keep up" with their neighbours. I find this to be largely unproductive, since the purchases seem to have a lot of social value, but precious little personal value. Some of my friends have remarked that however strong one may be, one cannot be an island. I concur in terms of productions and products that one cannot produce for oneself, but I also believe that one can still be as island-like as possible where applicable such that one does not get lost within the mindless masses.