The stuff-driven life...
What does it consists of?

Dear Mr. Stuff and Ms. Stuff:
No, I will not assume that you, Mr. Stuff and Ms. Stuff, are partners or comrades in stuff, although you may be. Just before dawn on a certain day during my musing you appeared before me with a presence that was so griping that I could not let go of you until I recorded the things revealed to me about you. What I am about to share with you is just a microcoam or tip of the iceberg of the things revealed to me. However, I feel that from this message you will get the answer to what you always wanted to know about stuff but was afraid to ask.
My one-word definition of stuff is mess. Stuff is mess and mess is stuff. When a person is in a mess it is because of the stuff he possesses or the stuff that possesses him.
No doubt you have already surmised that describing stuff is like describing mess. I agree. There is bad stuff and good stuff, small stuff and large stuff, free-for-all stuff, that usually the partaker of it ends up paying for; seasonal stuff for spring, summer, autumn and winter; stuff for special days, Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July; stuff for events such as sports and entertainment, political stuff that includes demagoguery; religious stuff found in houses of worship and houses of the faithful and on their bodies and in their minds; military stuff that cost more than any other item in the nation's budget; homeland security stuff that includes governmental and personal defense tactics aimed not just at terrorists but fellow citizens, guns, alarm systems, cameras, suveillance spy-on equipment and prisons; love and romance stuff, marriage, sexual intercourse engaged in for the purpose of reproduction or fun, sensual, fantasy, virtual focusing and perversion activity.
Also accompanying stuff are buying and consuming stuff, claiming, stealing, integrating and separating stuff, dissemination of information stuff, literature, television, radio, the spoken and written word, the "death of a salesman" stuff taken from a person who has been murdered by his stuff taker; mind and mind-boggling stuff that is often undergirded with "I believe," two words that form the basis for a person or nation making all sorts of irrational and unconscionable decesions, including the decision made by the leadership of the American Government to preemptively go to war in Iraq on the pretext, as the President put it, "I believe Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." The result: more than 100,000 Iraqis and approximately 1,500 Americans have been killed and daily the death count is increasing. American soldiers wounded is estimated to be 10,000.
What is the basis of humans' insatiable appetite for stuff? Is it inherited or learned? Greed is obviously one factor. Socialization is another factor. Humans learn to be inhumane and there is no shortage in the availability of teachers of inhumanness. It is highly likely that the first person the newborn encounters is such a teacher.
All that stuff. We cannot take it with us when we exit. To emphasize the point someone said, "You have never seen a u-haul behind a hearse." The records of history reveal that the stuff put with corpses in tombs and graves remained there until it deterioated, becoming dust, or until it is removed by grave robbers or other ghoulish people who may have been called excavators, archeologists or by some other fancy name.
The question is, "Will humans run out of stuff? Some people think we will deplete many of earth's resources by the end of the twenty-first century. The dinosaur became extinct as has some other species. The excessive use of petroleum (oil) and other resources, the impact of pollution on living things, nuclear power, the fact that Russia and the United States have agreed not to have a nuclear war, although they still have stockpiles of nuclear bombs and at least six other nations have the nuclear bomb. It is highly likely that as many as twelve countries will have the nuclear bomb by the year 2025. and what makes America think that those countries with nuclear bombs are more sane than those without them? It is ludicrous or sheer stupidity for Americans to think that non-American do not have the intelligence to do whatever Americans can do. Let us not forget that Americans learned much of what they know from people who were not Americans. What about "the stollen legacy"? The possibility is there that other nations will develop weapons that are more devastating than anything that is in the American arsenal. In recent years China who was adjudged by some to be a backward Communist country is now contending to become the world's leading economy. China provides much of the stuff that Americans consume. One need go no farther than Walt-Mart to validate this assertion. All this stuff. Will there be more or less stuff in the future? The law of entropy speaks of the degradation of resources and energy in the universe. Resources can become fewer or less and not be any more replaceable than dinosaurs. Despite the fact that stuff may vanish and become less humans continue to dump, waste and hoard stuff. Hoarding is no less a factor that contributes to the problem than these other practices cited because hoarding causes more exploitation and abuse of natural resources, including human beings.
All that stuff. How much does having stuff contribute, not to man's standard of living but, to his quality of life? More is not necessarily better than less. Remember this axiom: "the bigger you (it), are (is) the harder you (it) fall (falls). Stuff may become the stuff that results in the second Fall of Man. And since man has not rebounded from his first Fall, it is reasonable to assume that his second Fall will wipe him off the face of the earth. Yes, stuff could wipe man off the face of the earth.

Stuffingly yours,

A Stuffer

P. S. I want my stuff.

Copyright 2005 by Uriah J. Fields