Stuff Can Kill You

A Wal-Mart worker died, while four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured during "Black Friday", a day after Thanksgiving. Photos of the crowd at the Long Island location were caught on camera.

The eyewitness accounts are horrifying to read:

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people. They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me."

"They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door. Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over."

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been on line since Friday morning!' They kept shopping."

Read the full story here.

I admit that the title of this blog posting is disingenuous. No, stuff cannot kill you, but the desire to own stuff at all costs (i.e. human life, ecological destruction, energy consumption) is the psychological baggage that weighs us down from living a more soulful, compassionate and creative life.

It seems to me that this tragic incidence symbolizes the fear that ordinary people have for their jobs or job prospects, their ability to save or pay off their mortgages, their children's future and maintaining their current lifestyle. Rather than spending Black Friday connecting or visiting with their family and friends, there was an urgency to buy more stuff cheaply before it was all too late. Before they lose their jobs and cannot buy anymore stuff. Before their wages are frozen and cannot buy that Apple iPod as a Christmas present to his or her child. As the crowd lined up at pre-dawn waiting for the doors to open at 5 a.m. (and as this scenario was repeated throughout the country), might not the sense of anticipation arising from this crowd also carried with it a mixture of fear of the coming economic turmoil and what it could mean to their lifestyle?

David Wann said that "the things we value the most - meaning, purpose, relationships, and time to enjoy life - are being swept away. The burning question is, Can we wake up in time to make personal and social changes that can still prevent cultural death-by-overconsumption?"