Define necessity. How much do you actually need in your life? We buy, buy, and buy without counting the cost of our decisions. It is easy to get wrapped up in the world of novelty, sales, and affluence. New things are lustrous in our eyes, and we want to snatch them for ourselves. We build our self-image around these luxurious purchases we have made throughout our lives.  As we drive down the bright urban streets of America in our shiny new cars, we are boxed into a grand imaginary life. On that same highway of consumerist America, we are watched observantly by the Great Gatsby eyes of T. J. Eckleburg, the eyes that meet our greedy eyes and silently let us know this is not right. While the box hides us from the truth of the world, our possessions are spilling over into a land we do not know.

 Every $5 Forever 21 t-shirt, box television, and scuffed pair of high heels are piling up outside of our vision. They are accumulating in great mounds, clogging the landfills to where there is no more room. As if there is infinite space on the earth for old things, we buy more and throw away. In our mind, “ending is better than mending” (Brave New World), and it is even better if we do not have to see where our trash goes as if it magically disappears. Even worse, the average American does not consider what goes into making their products. All the way over in Bangladesh, impoverished people slave overproducing our cheap clothes for not even a daily living wage. Garment factories like Rana Plaza are toppling over, crushing the workers who give us want we want, without our even knowing about it. Assuming our products magically show up in stores, we trash anything that is too old or lacks utility, and it piles up in places like Bangladesh. The cycle continues endlessly. The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

The worst part of it all is that I, someone who hates American consumerism culture, am a hypocrite. As the byproduct of suburban America, I have grown up buying much and discarding much. I have participated in many a Black Friday frenzy over cheap, cute, (but unsustainable) clothing. Enough is enough. We, as a culture, desperately need to knock down the box that surrounds us and hides us from reality. We need to open our greedy eyes to the rest of the world suffering from our hasty decisions. Only then can we repair our society and world.