Tell me, are my eyes faulty? All I see, walking down this fashionable street busy with the well-dressed in a high-end shopping district, is the conspicuous consumption... of scraps! Chanel bags, Valentino shoes, God knows what brands of clothing - for a second, they seem to me to be only crusts and spilled bits of food, fallen to be devoured by dogs (and I say this with all due respect as a dog lover!). And as much as falls, that is how much will be devoured. We will not stop of our own accord if our bowls keep being refilled. Cheap manufacturing and global supply chains! Oh, to live in the last era adjacent to the great feast!
Do we realize that we no longer have access to the kitchen, not even invited to the dinner table? We’re here below, gorging on the last gasps of material excess. No longer productive, we are balancing the sheets of 200 years of unchecked industrial productivity. The fact that there are still so many leftovers available makes us forget that there are only leftovers left.
Friends, the high end is almost always the harbinger of the end. When living and consuming become dangerously conflated, neither are destined to be easy in short order.