With the recent advent of my obsession with my new cd player (yellow and as small as possible for a cd player, the perfect replacement for the ipod, which is now one of my most hated enemies...or apple is, at least), I have been thinking about something I read somewhere...that Americans have replaced individualism with consumerism--we've confused being an individual with buying things that we think show us as an individual.
And although I don't know if this theory really relates to, say, my mom, or your mom, I really think it defines a certain subset of people under the age of 25.

Something that relates to this, is that I've had multiple conversations with Aaron about how "our generation" doesn't seem to buy into the 9-5 bullshit that a lot of our parents did. After all, what did the 9-5 ever do to benefit the lives of our parents? A couple extra bucks, and a wasteland of all the hours they wasted away from the people they enjoyed, and the things they found interesting. Of course, this is coming from a fairly spoiled view of having enough money, or the knowledge of having enough ability to obtain money to live without putting 100% behind it.
These conversations were always self-congratulatory, and I really felt like a lot of the people I know have transcended the false belief that life must be 80% work, whatever's left is time to sleep, eat, and watch a bit of tv.
But today, when I was thinking about how awesome it would be to take a year off and actually come up with a novel that someone thought was worth something, or at least that I thought was worth something, or whatever--some accomplishment, I simultaneously thought how unlikely any of it was.
And that brought me to thinking about how a lot of people that have graduated with college degrees lately have just ended up doing random retail jobs (the same 9-5, though perhaps without the single-minded intensity that I saw my parents do it with) and trying to define themselves as individuals by "buying into" the newest indie band, the newest intellectual movie, or...a yellow cd player that makes everyday life feel different, even if just for a little while.
And it occurred to me how pointless it all was--our parents bought into the 9-5, believed that if they succeeded at that, it would make them successful at life. We (or some of us) don't. But what do we buy into? Do we believe in anything with as much intensity as all that? I don't think so...and I think we fill that void of belief and hope by trying to make ourselves into someone we can respect by defining ourselves through consumerism, veiled in some sort of feigned artistic sensibility.
Or maybe that's just how I am, and I'm making myself feel better by creating some companions in consumerism.

That said, I'm going to the Killers concert next week and you better respect my individualism for realizing the genius of Brandon Flowers.