The End of Excess?
The cover of Time’s April 6th edition proclaims “The End of Excess: Why This Crisis Is Good for America.”
Kurt Andersen, author of the cover article, boils it down to a story:
“You know the story of the ant and the grasshopper? The ant is disciplined, the grasshopper parties as if the good times will last forever-and then winter descends… It’s time to ratchet back our wild and crazy grasshopper side and get in touch with our inner ant.”
Having visited the insect house at the Cincinnati Zoo last Sunday, and having recently watched the classic Pixar movie A Bug’s Life, this analogy was quite meaningful to me! The leaf cutter ants we saw at the zoo were quite animated! Everyone working hard, with no conspicuous consumption, except maybe the queen, but I didn’t see her.
Now grasshoppers are probably getting a bad rap, but their human counterparts of excess and extravagance are clearly not popular right now. We’d claw back all the stolen, bilked and swindled money if we could.
If The Real Housewives of New York City on Bravo stop having champagne birthday parties for their dogs, that’s got to be a good thing! Flaunting luxury goods and bling seems so wasteful with the current economic conditions, so we can hope that our materialistic world of “greed is good” will truly be left behind.
Tomorrow, a look at “Selling Souls.” Has materialism blinded us to what is truly valuable?
RSS - Posts