On Amazon and the Smell.

I resolved this week never to have anything to do with Amazon again. It’s a convoluted story which I can’t be bothered to tell in detail, but it came down to their underhanded methods of trying to snare me into having an Amazon Prime account which I don’t want, never wanted, and never knowingly signed up for. It went much further than merely offering me a month’s free trial which they’ve been doing for a long time and which I’ve consistently declined. They’ve moved beyond that now and I’ve had quite enough of them. Besides which, they don’t have the best of ethical reputations either and I find that offensive.

So why don’t I want an Amazon Prime account? Well, several reasons, but the deepest of them is the same as the reason why I possess very little personal technological gadgetry and have no truck with social networking facilities. It isn’t because I can’t afford them or because I’m a reactionary in my attitude to modern times; it’s because they lie at the surface of a deeper issue: the smell of mother culture (which is similar to Daniel Quinn’s ‘hum of mother culture’, but with a different slant.)

It’s all to do with a culture which substitutes lifestyle for life; a culture based increasingly on the predominance of money, which makes the rich richer and more complacent while the poor become poorer and more stressed; a culture which seeks to buy the heart and soul of the masses and pays them with candyfloss laced with a soporific narcotic. To me, the culture smells bad and I dislike bad smells. It’s why I function at the edge of this way if life, taking just as much as I need to walk my own road and keep in touch with the few people worth keeping in touch with.

I could write reams about this, but I’m tired. And I do realise that touching on it so briefly and in such a perfunctory manner will probably result in misunderstanding. I stand to be shot at with accusations of hypocrisy and heaven knows what else. OK, but why should I care? I think I’ll move on now and write the post about my inestimable stock in the local community.