Necessity is the Mother of Invention.... Or is it?

Necessity is the mother of invention is a common phrase. I personally have heard all my life. But is that always the case? How do we find necessity? Do we invent things.... Just because? Neil Postman does not write directly toward this, but he does write about the god of consumership and the god of technology, which relate to these questions.

What is this god of consumership (g of C)? It is the idea that we, as someone in class defined it, make our identity with stuff. As Kalyn put it.... Whoever dies with the most toys wins. g of C creates a down cycle of buying more and more stuff because we claim that we "need" it.

But in our world today, this is true. We need more stuff. My dad has his own business and works from home. In order to keep up with the demand, he needs to increase the amount of equipment he has. Some of the jobs require more advanced technology. So in this sense, it really is a need.

How does this relate to kids? Day after day, they are bombarded with millions and millions of ads. Buy this, buy that... We are practically teaching our kids that they need more "stuff." School is just another avenue to buy more things for, like a new backpack, new outfits, new paper... Nothing lasts. In fact, that is the manufactures idea: make products that will suffice for the time being, but won't last, therefore giving the consumers a reason to buy more. Tricky huh? We have the technology to make light bulbs that don't burn out, jeans that last, nylons that don't run. But our culture is as such that we live by the fads. And the market companies milk that. People buy new "toys" just for the new features that they don't use. I have a cell phone. I know that there are features on there that I haven't explored on their yet simply because I haven't needed to. Or the case is that it has become a game: who can buy the most updated and cooler version of the toy first wins.

We need to teach our children to live the "simple life." That doesn't mean that they can't buy the new toys. But when that's all they live for, you've got a problem. When they miss out on life's little joys that are FREE, when they'd rather buy a new Super X 3000 toy and their old one is just as good, when they want to buy something just because it's new, folks, we better stop and check our values.