Re: OT: Materialism and reproductive success.

In article <1183152893.261585.40340@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Inez <savagemouse123@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No, not that sort of materialism. Today the new "iphone" reached
Apple stores, and people in Seattle lined up overnight to buy them. I
must admit to bafflement. Yesterday a fair good number of people
thought about what they wanted to do that evening and decided to spend
it standing out in front of a store in off-and-on drizzle all night
long so they could get first crack at a cell phone.

I don't know about other parts of the country but in Seattle you
cannot visit any shopping mall without being virtually assaulted by
twenty-something men with thin ties, over-familiar manners, and highly
greased hair for that weasel-swimming-in-the-toilet look, absolutely
beside themselves with desperation to sell you a cell phone.

My fear is that this sort of behavior is growing rather than
declining, and that there might actually be some sort of reproductive
advantage to it. Did people do this sort of thing in the 70's or
60's? Is the human race doomed to a future of glassy eyed lust for
common household objects?

If Big Business has its way, absolutely.

But it's an old trend. If somewhat worse now, and I'm not sure how
we'd measure that, I'll suggest it has more to do with machineries
which support the 'get it _now_' better now than previously.

"Be the first on your block to have ..." was a 1950s catchphrase.
And they had the hula-hoop, 'coonskin' caps, etc. 70s we went through
the LED watch (too expensive to be that big a craze), mood rings,
CB radios, and pet rocks. 80s we had cabbage patch kids, and wrestling
matches in the store at Christmastime over who could take the last one.
90s gave us tickle-me-elmo, which was cabbage patch worsened.

A friend made a nice income off the desire of folks, in the 80s and
90s, to _immediately_ have the latest, 'greatest' version of MS software.
Baffling to me, wanting the first, buggiest, release of MS, but there
you go. If not standing in the rain for hours, they were performing
equivalent dances.
--
Robert Grumbine http://www.radix.net/~bobg/ Science faqs and amateur activities notes and links.
Sagredo (Galileo Galilei) "You present these recondite matters with too much
evidence and ease; this great facility makes them less appreciated than they
would be had they been presented in a more abstruse manner." Two New Sciences

.

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