The Non-Refundable Spiritual Warranty

Posted on November 14, 2007
Filed Under Fake Culture, Society, Spirituality |

It’s a common assertion nowadays that nothing is built to really last. Everything is made as cheaply as possible with the idea that it can be replaced in a few years when it breaks or wears out. Of course this keeps the consumer happy because it means things are generally quite cheap, and it also makes the corporations very happy - as they get to cultivate a growing desire for consumption. Naturally that means more money - it keeps people in work, and keeps the countries economy turning over. Just think what would happen to the world’s economy if everything was built to last, and every product you ever brought would last a life time…

The economy would stop. There really wouldn’t be any profit. But as I said, this is all a common assertion; it’s obvious and has come someway to being perceived as a necessary evil. Now it’s not the economic or consumer impact we should be interested in as far as I am concerned. What about the spiritual impact on an individual level?

When we adopt an attitude that everything is replaceable - then everything becomes expendable. Everything is simply a means to an end - and the ends very much supersede the means. If all we hold is considered to be expendable then it has no real meaning or value to us, it is merely temporary. And that’s not the temporary as in transitory - like going to sleep and then waking up. But temporary as in - ‘Well this has X value to me now, and tomorrow it maybe useless. But I really don’t care to think about that.’

I suspect that if we were to sit down and chart the growth of consumerism, and materialism and compared it to the increase in the break-down of families and relationships, that there would be a very strong correlation. When our attitude becomes that strongly entrenched in the idea of ‘it’s good enough for now’, that belief extends to every aspect of our lives. Our existence becomes about striding from one temporary measure to the next, and in the end life becomes a patchwork of varied, mis-aligned and often non-compatible events, people, situations and actions.

This is why so many people fail to see the spiritual, because the spiritual has an element of permanence which transcends the corporeal. And in many cases our materialistic minds are loosing the ability to even perceive the permanent. This is a great shame, because it is one of the factors of so many problems in the world.

The next time you make a purchase consider the permanence of what you have obtained - if there even is one; if there is - what is it and where does it reside. If there is not an element of permanence, what did your transaction truly accomplish? The permanence is never in what we can actually hold - but it is there somewhere, it’s just a case of looking for it…