beatnikchick

[beatnikchick]

Commercialism Manifesto

Defying age has nothing to do with denying age. It has more to do with denouncing the concept of the chronological progression arbitrarily implemented by a system that benefits from us dying. 50 was meant to make you feel old, they benefited from selling “age defying” formulas. They benefited from you dying before you could collect social security; ergo, if 50 is old you would feel ancient by 62.

It’s the same with the food pyramid. They wanted to sell more food so you need four food groups, and 1400-2000 calories a day; when, historically through thousands of years this was never true. We are consumers, we are their marks. Nothing we have been taught is for our benefit. It is to sell something. Don’t randomly eat or snack because society says to eat three meals, and two snacks a day. Eat when you’re hungry, and stop when you aren’t.

All shampoos are essentially made with the same garbage, stop searching for the one that’s going to fix your hair, it doesn’t exist. Your hair is that way because you are trained to pay top dollar for chemical treatments that destroy your scalp and hair. Your mother did it, and your grandmother did it but your great grandmother couldn’t afford it nor did she have the time, and her hair did look better. Blondes don’t have more fun but it sure cost a small fortune to find that out, and that’s what they are counting on.

Stop buying diamond rings that cost 6 times your rent to prove that you love someone. The way traditional diamonds are ascertained is inhumane anyway. But besides that they have vaults and vaults full of them. They are not rare gems. They are overpriced rocks that literally have only the value De Beers company (do not ignore the blood on their hands, it’s criminal what they are responsible for) taught to see in them.

This is the post World War 2 conditioning that the American government took from Hitler. Basically that we are their consumerist monkeys that weren’t being utilized to their full potential. This is why you feel suffocated by consumerism. This is why they price gouge everything because they know we will eventually adapt, and pay.

Stop adapting. Reject the system. Unlearn what you’ve learned from two generations of people who were guinea pigs pitted against each other to “keep up with the Joneses”.

Who are you before they told you who to be, and what has value? What has value to you that doesn’t have a price tag? Don’t just say what you were taught to say. Even that, kith and kin, family and friends. That goes without saying. We were taught to say it in defense of all your monetary expenditures. “Of course I like my things but my family comes first”. How many times have you heard that. Paging Captain Obvious.

What is important to you? Let’s assume it’s already family and friends. Do you value nature, do you value a quiet evening reading, do you value art and music? Try to find things that you value that don’t come with a price tag. Another one is, “well I like to spend money”. Do you though, do you like being in debt? Do you love that second mortgage? Do you love getting divorced because your husband or wife doesn’t want to work until they’re dead to pay for your lifestyle, and love of spending money? That high you get is you filling a void that you were conditioned to fill.

You were introduced to commercials at a vulnerable age. You were taught that when you were sad (remember the kid was always sad before getting the toy or food) that when you got this shiny thing you would feel happy. Just like a good guinea pig you were conditioned as the perfect specimen to buy the shiny things, and work until you’re dead to pay for them.

You were not born to work, pay bills, and die. You feel that there is something unnatural about this existence because there is. Exist for yourself, for your friends and family, for experiences. That does not mean there is not responsibility. The chores still need to get done, and yes, money is a part of the system that we are all unfortunately prey to, so working is required. However, work to pay for your needs, and value your time over your preconceived wants.

Your time is something they value. It’s really the only thing they value aside from their God, money. They need you more than you need them. Without you they wouldn’t be flying around in jets, and eating at restaurants with food that cost as much as your rent or mortgage. Make your time invaluable. Make it the most precious thing in your life because it is. It’s the only thing that is truly yours.

You would argue that your body is. I would argue that the fact that you are subjected to god only knows what since the FDA lowered their standards in the 90s by a good 40K, and steadily have been cutting out the rest of the requirements. The fact that the air we breathe, and the water we drink are polluted that our bodies are not our own.

But our time, and our attention is. Take it back, make it yours again. Not for me, I don’t know you. I don’t benefit from this. You do what you want. But isn’t that kind of the point here. Do what YOU want not what they have taught you that you want.

I guarantee you though if you stop going to the hair salon to fix your hair (it was never broken), stop stockpiling your kitchen with thousands of dollars in groceries you end up throwing away at the end of two weeks, stop buying fancy overpriced jewelry (buy a unique piece from a local artist, you’ll get way more compliments anyway, if that’s what you value), stop buying 250-700 dollar Christmas trees, just stop buying Christmas presents altogether. Teach your children that time together is the gift. I’m not saying don’t buy the kids anything just do it throughout the year. Surprising them when they aren’t expecting it is more fun anyway.

Whatever you decide to do, make it your decision. Be aware of what they are selling you. Be aware of how you are constantly being barraged. You can’t even watch something, read an article etc. without them selling you something. Next time you go to a store see if you can walk out with nothing. Make yourself immune to their bullshit.

The economy won’t crumble, it will change, and we will adapt. We will adapt, and be happier. Mortgage’s will go down in price, groceries will, prices in general will drop. The scare tactic implanted by economists is that it’s not how the economy works. It absolutely is, we control the economic trends. Our money talks even when our mouths are closed. If you think economists aren’t paid to scare you into spending well I don’t know what to tell you because everyone in our current socioeconomic climate can be bought.

#commercialism #consumerism #overspending #money #manifesto #rant

[beatnikchick]

They stand away from their poetry, as though it was something they were ashamed to be associated with. That’s why they write for the New Yorker. Not only can they be poets but sophisticates, too. How can anyone truly be a poet who goes to the john with a clothespin on his nose. Fops, that’s what they are, not poets.

Gregory Corso

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #the beats #the beat generation #gregory corso

[beatnikchick]

I will not submit my soul wholly, I save a secret piece for myself… and a woman wants to control her man to feel secure. I can understand this. But I do not ask a woman for her complete soul either.

Charles Bukowski, Beerspit Night and Cursing

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #charles bukowski #Sheri martinelli #beerspit night and cursing

[beatnikchick]

You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people done talk.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #oscar wilde #the importance of being earnest

[beatnikchick]

#literature #writer #poetry #original poetry #author

[beatnikchick]

For it is difficult for any of us to calculate exactly on what scale his words or his gestures are apparent to others. Partly from the fear of exaggerating our own importance, and also because we enlarge to enormous proportions the field over which the impressions formed by other people in the course of their lives are obliged to extend, we imagine that the accessories of our speech and attitudes scarcely penetrate the consciousness, still less remain in the memory of those with whom we converse.

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #tumblog #marcel proust #Proust #within a budding grove

[beatnikchick]

Right outside town there is a spring, a spring that holds me in thrall like Melusine and her sisters. - You go down a little slope and come to a vault where some twenty steps descend to where the clearest of water pours forth from the marble rock. The low wall about the spring above, the tall trees that shade the place, the coolness of the spot, all of this has something both attractive and awesome.

The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #tumblog #goethe #johann wolfgang von goethe #the sorrows of young werther

[beatnikchick]

But what good would it do to journey far from everything, since voices are everywhere and nowhere a refuge watched over by some quiet beneficence that might receive me. Nowhere the place where pettiness grows less insistent and less harsh. If I were to go to into the desert, I would perish from sun and hunger; for the birds have ceased coming to the hermit: they toss their bread into the crowd and the crowd scuffles for it…

Rainer Marie Rilke love letters to Lou-Andreas Salome

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #poetry #rainer maria rilke #lou salomé #lou andreas salomé #love letters

[beatnikchick]

I have such longing for what has passed. I don’t want to hold onto it and think about it. But I wish I could feel its presence half-intuitively in the things that are around me now. I will never cease to mourn these losses. Why did I forget that not dying is not the same as being alive, and that not sleeping is still a long way from being awake. To be awake and to be alive are deeds, not states. And I did not do them!

Rainer Marie Rilke love letters to Lou-Andreas Salome while in Worpswede (a farmhouse with a garden where artists lived, and created together)

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #tumblog #rainer maria rilke #lou andreas salomé #lou salomé #love letters

[beatnikchick]

I want to put flowers in your hair. But what flowers? There are none with touching enough simplicity. And from what May would I fetch them? But I’m convinced now that you always have a wreath in your hair… or a crown… I’ve never seen you any other way.

Rainer Marie Rilke love letters to Lou Andreas-Salomé

#lou salomé #literature #writer #rainer maria rilke #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #tumblog #poetry #love letters

[beatnikchick]

And indeed her presence gave the house what none of the other houses that he visited seemed to possess: a sort of nervous system, a sensory network which ramified into each of its rooms and sent a constant stimulus to the heart.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Volume 1, Swann’s Way

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #tumblog #marcel proust #swann’s way #romantic #poetic #in search of lost time

[beatnikchick]

And these dreams reminded me that, since I wish to be a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or that perhaps some malady of the brain was hindering its development.

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time: Volume 1, Swann’s Way

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #tumblog #writers #marcel proust #swann’s way #in search of lost time

[beatnikchick]

Monsieur Legrandin from Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust is tantamount to George Katsimbalis in the Colossus of Maroussi by Henry Miller. Both characters are delightful in an ironizing way that both paints a caricature but also has you longing for the eccentricity they lend if indeed not hyperbolized by the writers. Just as I did with almost all discourse Miller experienced with Katsimbalis, I too laughed at every experience Proust had with M Legrandin. My literary cup runneth over tonight, and I feel spoiled by my delight 😂.

#literature #writer #books #books & libraries #tumblog #henry miller #marcel proust #swann’s way #the collosus of maroussi #funny post #observational humor

[beatnikchick]

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object… of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die.

Marcel Proust (Remembrance of Things Past Volume 1: In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way)

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #tumblog #marcel proust #swann’s way #Remembrance of Things Past

[beatnikchick]

Such is my spellbound nature, so easily dazzled. I belong to the minute. It falsifies all perspective for me. It shuts me off from diversity. I yield to him who convinced me. I take on onerous duties. That is why solitude does me good.

Jean Cocteau

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #quotes #tumblog #jean cocteau

[beatnikchick]

Not that writers obey orders, but they are caught by a contagion of directives, by a delight in spattering the lonely pedestrian.

Jean Cocteau

#literature #quote #writer #books #books & libraries #tumblog #quotes #poetry #art #jean cocteau

[beatnikchick]

79 degrees today, got my mug of brandy, Jean Cocteau, and a symphony of birds singing just for me ❤️.

#literature #writer #quote #books #books & libraries #tumblog #beatnik #jean cocteau #the journals of Jean Cocteau