Published on October 7, 2005
By
PZach
In
Misc
I find myself in the USA as I resume posting at this site after many months. And I am spending a good deal of time with my grandchildren growing up here. They have a profusion of toys, according to my standards, with the result that they seldom stay with any of them or take good care of them. They just do not have the joy of making the most of a limited number of toys, choosing favourites among them and finding new creative ways extracting more and more fun out of of them. Birthdays, with their fresh infusion of toys, are a nightmare for the parents.
But on a larger scale this seems to be a reflection on life itself in this superpower country. It looks like a megamarket to me, where buying and selling seem to be the end itself, where everything has a price (subject to internet comparison) but the buyers have little time to reflect on their value. What does not find immmediate use goes into the garage and thence eventually to garage sale or Good Samaritans.
Of course this is not an attempt to take my good friends in this hospitable land to task, but rather an expression of my anxiety for my own and other developing countries for whom the gold standard of development seems to be the US way of life.
PZach