Materialism is an interesting thing for me. You see, I am quite introspective, yet I do not seem to have a good defense mechanism against my materialistic tendencies. Even when I do recognize my materialism, I see reluctant to detach myself from it. For example, I might want a shiny new X, and then I will think to myself "well, you already have an X and it's doing an alright job. You don't need a new X, you're just being materialistic." but after I think this, I get an interesting thought to counter it, it's hard to put into words, but it's something along the lines of "Look, you really want X. Don't pretend that you don't. You're trying to reject materialism, but it's not you. You're only trying to fool yourself into being happy without these possessions".

I see that I have been brainwashed by the system to be materialistic, but each time I fight against it my mind is basically saying that I am the fox convincing himself he doesn't want grapes. Which is true, but I am not appreciating the fact that in this case, the fox has been told his whole life that he should fucking love grapes without consideration of what he probably truly wants, or more importantly actually needs. It's actually funny the little back and forths I have in my mind over this because I am generally not one who will just buy something that I want. I need to convince myself of it.

So, to be less abstract and more concrete, I'll give an example. I have a laptop, which is doing the job that it needs to do. It's getting a bit old now in technological terms, in that it's over 3 years old now. Because I know it's old, I want to get a new one at some point, but I am unable to sell it to myself. I look up the stats of new laptops in comparison to mine, and there really isn't that much of a performance boost. In fact, with what I do with my laptop, I don't actually need a performance boost. At no point am I sitting there thinking "fuck this piece of shit is slow". Yet, my mind has been trained to desire the latest and greatest and is trying to convince me to get new shit, even when there isn't good reason for it and then saying if I don't get it, it's an assault on my pride.

Makes me feel real fucked up to be honest This laptop is just an example, but it can be with anything like smart phones, computers, cars or whatever. It's like I have been trained to never be content, and it's real hard to overcome that and be not just accepting of not being "up to date" but to actually be desirous of it. I do not wish to be a mere puppet doing as I am commanded, but it's a tough battle man. At least I've recognized the issue, time to work on it.