Prisoners

How do you convince someone to stay out of prison? Prisoners who have been incarcerated for long periods become acclimatized to the prison lifestyle. All their acquaintances are also imprisoned, so they start thinking: this is just how everyone lives.

I read the following on The Minimalists, a blog written by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus:

“There’s a shopping mall in San Diego that used to be a prison. Restored, repurposed, and redecorated, it’s hard to imagine that this place once imprisoned hundreds of inmates.

One might argue, however, that it’s a different kind of prison now. A voluntary incarceration, caged by the invisible walls of consumption.

This might sound hyperbolic, but it’s an apt analogy. After all, consumption isn’t the problem; compulsory consumption (consumerism) is the problem. We’ve trapped ourselves by thinking that consumerism will make us happy, that buying shit we don’t need will somehow make us whole.

We’ve gotten good at fooling ourselves, too. We’ve over decorated the jailhouse walls—walls we’ve built around ourselves—and we’ve made our cells so comfortable that we’re terrified to leave. But a prison cell with a view is still a prison cell.” (The Minimalists Blog http://www.theminimalists.com/prison/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theminimalists%2FHztx+%28The+Minimalists%29 )

I felt convicted by the above writing. We are a high consumption society, and most of us are prisoners of debt. We work to pay off debt, and we consume to distract ourselves from the burden of debt. Consumption and debt are the motors that drive our economy and our lifestyle. Everyone we know is also in the same boat. We don’t even know how we would live outside these prison walls.

Yet, there are many people on the outside living in freedom. Their simple lifestyles rarely attract notoriety. They contribute more than they consume. They are not confined by materialism. They do not owe, thus, no one owns them. They are not slaves, but masters of their own lives.