By Mikaela Arce

“Grey Thursday”, “Black Friday”,  “Cyber Monday”- all offer dramatic price cuts on merchandise in store and online.  70%, 80%, sometimes even as much as 90% off (some sarcastically call it “the day merchandise is sold for what it’s actually worth”).  With this year’s latest sales, it’s impossible not to take advantage of the opportunity to literally shop until you drop. But maybe these things that we want aren’t what we need?

Each year in America, we have a thanksgiving holiday where we take the entire day to be thankful for everything we have (and to eat) to celebrate our friendship with the natives (even though everyone likes to conveniently forget that we live on stolen land). Ironically, hours later we go out of our way to spend money we don’t have getting things we don’t need for people who we don’t need to impress with fancy gifts, because they’re our friends and family regardless if we get them an xBox or a macaroni necklace.

It’s no secret that over the years technology has been improving at an astoundingly fast rate and things are becoming more and more efficient each passing day. The technology that has saved lives, improved education, and helped society as a whole has simultaneously made us more selfish, uninformed, ungrateful and most importantly more alone. Over the years gift giving has changed because technology and the media teaches us that the way to get affection is not to offer sentiment and love, but instead “the latest” in trends. We are buying into the system and putting everything we have into these big corporations only to be rewarded with a life of servitude to their products.  Filling our lives with such meaningless subjects like how many followers we have on twitter, what the #ootd [outfit of the day] will be, or how long we need to work to save up for buying our Christmas gifts is part of the punishment.

Even the most high end department store could not outweigh your recognition of worth towards the ones you love.