HOMOGENIZED

"We're corporate by-products of the products we buy."

Fashion and retail seem to rule the world as much as governments. Retailers, magazines and advertisers use us as unwary stooges in an unwinnable shell game of profit and loss. Red carpet events and concern for how we look triumphs over who we are on the inside, and "they" don't care. Their primary concern is to keep us one step behind, always playing catch up, which requires more spending, often spending of money we don't have - running up "credit card debt on planned obsolescence."

We are indeed "fashioned by a world of lies." After all, it's "all in the image." You are what you buy. But while we fall victim to the trends we are not the only victims. For example, while at the same time there are demands for higher wages there are ridiculous premiums being paid for resale of tennis shoes or Stanley drinking cups without regard for who is employed in making those products in cheaper labor markets.

Maybe our participation in virtual reality is designed to escape reality, not enhance it. Blinded by blue light emitting devices we seem to be losing contact with the real world, with human compassion and interaction, with civility, instead bowing down to the next virtual experience on the internet. And using "more than I have now" as the definition of 'enough' we can see that there is no end in sight.

The instant availability of information (again, not knowledge or wisdom) is yielded to time and again. What you see is more often not what you get in terms of images and often information itself. We are led "astray with false advertisements" in a search for value, hoping to "purchase our self esteem."

"Keep your guard up cause it's too late when they break through

Reflections in the mirror only show a fake you

Out with the old and make room for the Jung (Carl - see what I did there?)

While our complex archetypes come undone"

The quest for individuality with this as the framework only ends in homogenization.