11.28.15 I was born without the shopping gene. Actually, without the folding, finances, and cooking genes too.

No offense to anyone at all, really. Because each of us is unique. But , coming up in miserable, yet well off circumstances, growing up with siblings and Shepherds in a Pine Forest, I never understood shopping as an activity in and of itself . A sport. 

Deciding to go out shopping for things you might not know you needed, or wanted. To be itchy or tired or bored or upset, and go get stuff. 

Think about it. Our history. Growing and making our own things . Or paying or owning others, and making them go create the things we needed or wanted.

Imagine living anywhere at all , after the industrial revolution , when consumerism began to take off for real. 

When people began to have 'jobs' as opposed to a way if life. So they had to leave their babies and kids and homes and each other and go to a big place someone else owned . And work by that persons rules. 

And 12 hours later, went home . Got paid. Went and bought stuff they needed. Stuff that was suddenly being produced in mass amounts and sent all over the place to be bought .

New big time accumulation of wealth . Or big time dispossessed working poor. 

People's needs being postponed or disregarded due to no longer being in neighborhood or raising their own food or working at their own craft. 

Feeling lost and out of control and controlled by others more powerful , purchasing things to feel better.

That's how it looks to me. The shopping .

Course , I was born without the shopping gene, I suppose. The gene that makes you yearn for more new better different stuff.
And once in my own , I wasn't that interested in that. More interested in going places and doing things. Same when I had my kids. 

Our culture here is such a powerful odd duck of an individualistic self-absorbed, each- person- for- themselves -am- I- good- enough- yet amalgam. 

Talking with my niece who lives in Paris, at Thanksgiving, was fascinating. Because it's only then, or if can travel to other lands , that you can see your own culture , or the tiny bit you are familiar with ( not all the cultures of thus huge country ) in stark revealing relief. Our ambient defensive insistence upon being best ( like any uncertain scared insecure five-year- old ). 

Our love of 'stuff' which is not unique certainly to the US.
Which seems fine . Just tweaked a bit far, til it becomes the competitive satisfaction , derived of getting your hands on that good deal, instead of the next person getting it . Phew. 

Distracting us in a serious daily manner, from settling down into what might nourish and satisfy and settle us most.