Unfortunately, there are a huge number of people who make up this country who are very uneducated, very ignorant, very selfish, and very lazy. I have a name for them that I will not post here as it is very offensive. You can see a lot of these people in the aisles of Walmart, for example, wandering around like zombies: their only goal is to feather their nest with bits of cheap plastic.
They care not where these items come from, the impact the mining, production, and wastes created by these cheap goods have on the environment, not to mention the lives of the people in far-off lands who are actually working to create them - people whose lives are pathetically miserable, who make no money, who are SICK and DIE because of their need to work creating these products that we take for granted.
I was in JCPenney today with my mom (black friday of all days) and I realized how obscene our consumption of cheap crap really is! The one store is filled to the brim with junk, junk, junk and there are tens of thousands of these stores worldwide! When I started to mentally envision the amount of resources being used and abused in the creation of these consumer "goods" my head started to reel.
But as I was saying, there are far too many people who can't seem to stop, or don't see any purpose in stopping, the insane consumption of this Stuff. Many people are so blind to their "need", their "desire" for useless junk that gets inevitably tossed out within months of its purchase....only to cause the "need" to go purchase even more to replace it. Our homes are FILLED with piles of THINGS. To REAL poor people in China, India, Nepal, even the poorest American is wealthy beyond belief. We take our abundance for granted.
Many people are too scared to stop. Many people are addicted, slaves to consumption. Our children are slaves to consumption. It is maddening that people, HUMANS, are trampled to death because everyone was in a rush to purchase the last Playstation in the store.
I have no faith that this attitude will change. I have no faith that everyone will wake up one day and see that the cycle is being caused by our "need" for cheap crap, our "need" to replace our computers every year, our "need" to upgrade to the latest and greatest video game system, our "need" to have the latest fashion jeans. Where do we think this stuff comes from??? And where do we think it GOES??? We are so far removed from the reality of all this that many people don't bother to think about it. And if you try to tell them, inform them, they DO NOT CARE. All they care about is the Stuff.