The Pinacle Of Human Achievement?
Friends, I have been pondering just what best symbolizes man’s greatest achievement during the last ten thousand years. I have come to the conclusion that it is the shopping mall!
Why do I think this, you ask? Well, I considered a large number of human achievements: technological, artistic, medical, etc, but none of them seemed to come near the impact that the shopping mall has on our lives.
Consider if you will the image shown above. There are three stories of beautifully appointed shops, hundreds of them. Humans can spend hours wandering up and down in them while clutching at their credit cards and wallets, their eyes agog. Some malls are so big you can get lost. That’s why mobile phones are so popular. You can always ring the police and ask them to come and rescue you!
Inside these grand, air-conditioned, brightly-lit Temple of Commerce there are huge department stores, medium sized specialty shops, lots of boutiques, food halls, temporary stalls, hairdressers, banks, cinemas, skating rinks, you name it, if it makes a dollar it’ll be there.
Each shop is bedecked with flamboyant signs signifying bargains, specials, discounts, no payments for a year or two, buy one and get one free, anything that will tempt the shoppers to come in through the doors where salespeople, their nostrils quivering, will go through their practiced spiel until you finally give in and leave the store carrying goods in a large bag which turns you into a walking billboard and advertises that you are a person of substance!
Yes, folks, this is the culmination of human achievement in a capitalist world. You go to school, get trained for a vocation, seek employment, get paid which allows you to visit the Temples of Commerce in your spare time and buy lots of stuff that is poorly made and that you don’t really need!
Of course, not everyone in the world is able to visit Malls. Why? They are usually found in rich countries. People in poor countries are too poor to have Malls because entrepreneurs from rich countries exploit their cheap labour and resources. Some of the poor are starving so a walk in a Mall is probably the last thing on their mind.
And of course, many of those who do visit Malls in rich countries can’t really afford to but the availability of easy credit quickly takes care of that and people have lots of credit cards and use some of them to make repayments to others.
Yes, friends, the Mall is certainly the greatest achievement of capitalist mankind and it took ten thousand years to bring it to fruition!
Worship there soon, shop till you drop, and help make the obscenely wealthy even richer!
You are forgetting the physical benefits associated with this activity – he wrote sarcastically…
Mall Walking is very popular
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mall_walking
“Advantages to the mall owners:
Many malls actively encourage mall walking with special clubs and benefits. It is seen by the mall owners as beneficial for several reasons:
* The mall walkers are present during hours when the mall would otherwise be mostly unoccupied, except for the workers preparing to open the stores, so there is no chance of crowding out “paying customers”.
* Mall walkers tend to be a crowd requiring little supervision, but because the mall is preparing to open, the mall’s security staff is usually already on-site.
* After walking, mall walkers may well stay on and shop the stores or patronize the mall’s food court, increasing the traffic in the mall during what would otherwise be the very slow opening hour.
* Mall-walking programs provide good, often free, publicity for the mall owners.”
Pathetic isn’t it?
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David G Reply:
May 1st, 2009 at 11:56 am
Indeed it is, Charles!
It brings me to tears sometimes, the thought that humans, after centuries of wonderful achievements in the arts and sciences, have come to think that this kind banality is so worthwhile and important.
Perhaps I expected too much.
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David, I think of them as a shopping centre and not a mall, as a mall implies that we can’t think for ourselves so we follow suite of American branding. Ah yes the shopping centre where you have small grocer’s constantly in competition with the multinationals who by using buying power can give better prices to the detriment of small business. Shopping centres!!!! Where floor plans are the same, same shops in them offering the same deals and they will all look bloody same, am I going insane? They don’t offer anything exceptional or free, except the use of the toilets. Often I see the cleaner of these centres getting around picking up and cleaning other peoples waste. They look so unhappy and depressed and I wonder do they shop here and are they the equivalent of our working poor just going threw a motion to meet an end of feeding their families while serving the rich, useless and hopeless. If this is the peak of human achievement then we are indeed doomed.
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David G Reply:
May 1st, 2009 at 12:59 pm
No you’re not going insane, Kemosobi. If you’ve been in one mall/shopping centre, you’ve seen them all.
Imagine mall-walking as Charles mentioned in the States. Fancy anyone in their right mind choosing to walk around a Mall rather than out in the sunshine and fresh air. I guess we’ll have mall-walking here soon enough!
Coco, to many the Mall is a Temple where they worship the God of Materialism!
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why give the mall the ‘capital’ m……………………
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Hi All-I have been gone for awhile…there is a movie “the gods must be laughing”—aussie film that totally shows the dangers of materialism on a small group of aussie natives…anyone seen it?
David–didn’t Christ overturn the moneychangers in the Temple?–The people had to pay for the doves to enter and offer gifts of submission… double taxation..that’s religion for ya..Kate
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I would say that the TV is probably greater (not in the sense that it is better) since the mall wouldnt exist without the mass consumption propped up by the adverstising on TV! Add to this the very real changes wrought in our behaviour and psychology by TV and I beleive that there is no arguement at all.
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The mall near my house was built in the 1980′s and looks like a Cathedral with tall glass spires. The center of our devotion to all things material and the pleasure of acquiring with a food court for your daily bread and wine or soda, your choice. However, like Heaven, you must earn your way around there. Penniless sinners need not apply. You can clean toilets or flip burgers this incarnation and hope and aspire to be an affluent nuclear family some day.
The thing to do is – think – about each material item. Reduce. Re-use. Recycle. If everybody did it — haha and I might add that the economy is forcing almost everybody to Stop buying most anything anymore. The problem is when things are only bad for a little while. Not long enough for us to put our foot down and demand trains that go everywhere and community bicycles. Actual solutions that always go away as soon as the gas price goes down again. People are suckers that way.
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Have you tried to walk outside in an American city lately? four lane roads, traffic speeding past, driveways for drive in banks, fast food places etc. If there even is a sidewalk you’re dodging cars constantly. Not enough time for elderly people to cross at the lights. Breathing in gas and deisel fumes, not fresh air. In subdivisions, if they’re not gated, half the time there aren’t any sidewalks. No wonder people walk in malls.
Kate I seem to remember a movie that started with a coke bottle, but I thought it was set in Africa?
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Kate, the Gods Are Laughing was an African movie, one that I loved. It really did shown how stupid the white race is!
David, television is another good example. Of course, television and Malls go together with one feeding the other!
Grace, people sadly are suckers but there is some evidence that some of them are waking up.
Northmoon, if capitalists could ensure that humans could only walk in malls they would. What an ignoble, pathetic end for the human race! (Yes, I did receive your emails)
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What I find so aweful about malls is the lack of nature. There is no way to tell if it is day or night, sunny or cloudy etc. That is for a reason I am sure. Surrounded by all the artificialality of the mall I, and I am sure, most other people loose their grounding in the real world which allows them to shop and spend and not realise until they get home, and reconnect with reality, just what they have done.
Then they are left with buyers remorse and a huge credit card bill.
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Yes thanks..”the gods must be crazy “–Africa? I remember they used a clicking speech–made a big impact on my perception of “to have and to be”…Now the less I buy, esp new things,I am more peaceful and less striving.Kate
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I’ve never liked shopping malls, even when I was little. It is funny now that I look back on it, I felt miserable when I went to them. Maybe this is why I am where I am now, adamantly against the societal norms that are so mindless and destructive. Materialism is unfortunate. It is very hard to combat. How does one get others to become less materialistic, even of the slightest degree, when it has been our society’s way of life for generations?
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They should call them mauls ..as in mauls u of your senses and what little money u have.I often think of the disney corp as the first molesters of children sucking them in with cartoons to buy products to create another generation consumptors.mindless isnt it
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Throughout history man’s greatest achievement has been the creation of all manner of God’s, to cleanse themselves of personal responsibility, all the while slaughtering hordes of innocents, raping, pillaging and plundering, all in the name of who else? The US of A, my hometown, seems especially intent on continuing this highly successful endeavor. And people wonder why I drink! Just distorting my reality to a palatable level. The truth, truly, cuts both ways.
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VR2, I think man’s greatest achievement was the discovery of wine. How else can a human live for sixty or so years in this madhouse?
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Thank you David! I feel like I just got my parking space on earth validated FOR FREE! Thank you again, my friend.
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Don’t forget the green gift from mother earth. The herb that keeps us connected. The green is quickly becoming the medicine of choice for many with PTSD. The U.S.Govt, which barely acknowleges the hoardes of nerve pain and mental problems suffered by Veterans, is gradually legalizing and decriminalizing marijuana. Peace from the redwoods of Northern cali. Driving precautions must be observed as with the fermented berries and barley.
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