Children

Christmas is marketed most vigorously to children, who are the consumers of the future. It is the Indoctrination Holiday for Materialism. So, behind the many pompous and hypocritical rituals about generosity and world peace, lies a ruthless campaign to sell the latest gadgets and hook youngsters on the latest craze. Corporate advertisers encourage competition and envy in children by setting up the "must" acquisitions of the given year.

Is there any true wonder at the sloth-like progress of the human species toward universal human rights and universal economic justice? Hardly.

Capitalism is based on the atavistic model of two cavemen beating each other up over a fertile female. All world cultures share this outmoded model, but capitalists have refined it to sell everything from expensive arena tickets to flying automobiles. Meanwhile, cooperation, a much more efficient and productive model for actually getting things done, is delegated to mergers and acquisitions. Cooperation is seen as effeminate, passive and suspect, perhaps part of some Communist Terror.

Children get the message. They are learning to bully. They know how to form gangs. They storm schools with automatic weapons. Their narcissism now persists into early middle age. More and more children with more and more materialistic aggression will lead to inevitably grim consequences for the species and the planet. We see all too many examples, presented in the media with befuddled naivete, "How could this happen?"

As long as children are indoctrinated into a life of competitive consumption, human progress will be hampered by aggression and economic inequities. This is simply cause and effect.