Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Due to an error in my brain, the last entry seemed to imply that yesterday was “Buy Nothing Day”, when it is, in fact, today. This is due to me trying to write an entry while tired and confused. I have just specifically unobserved “Buy Nothing Day” and I hope you all will too.

In light of the recent creation of this day, I’m planning to start up my own day. I’d like to declare November the 29th, 2003 the very first “Throw yourself off a Bridge Day.” Spread the word, friends. Hopefully people who care to observe these arbitrarily made days will observe this too. It’s not that I specifically have a problem with “Buy Nothing Day” (Well, I do in a way, but that’s no part of what I’m about to say) it’s that people seem to be under the impression that a grand gesture in this manner will accomplish anything beyond raising the tiniest bit of awareness for some cause. If you want to make a stand again globalisation or capitalism of whatever the hell Buy Nothing Day is trying to do, then it’s going to take more than a few people not buying things. If you got all the people not buying stuff and had them burn their money, that’d be more like it.

This is kind of similar to why I think the whole “Join Me” movement is kind of motivated by middle-class guilt more than genuine compassion or selflessness, it’s all so dogmatic. If you want to make a difference to people, why make it on a certain day, why make it a specific act of kindness? Why not simply change yourself instead of waiting to be told how to do it? On the other hand, if you’re instructed and you fulfill that instruction you can feel secure that you’ve done your bit by completing the most trite of goals. Well done, pat yourself on the back, mission accomplished. Except it isn’t. And it never will be, not if you’re actually after some kind of proper social change instead of mere organised wackiness.

Which brings me back to Buy Nothing Day. Organised wackiness, and nothing more.