It says part 1 because I don't know how long this is going to be. It might end up being only a part 1 but I just want to take preparations for it to end up being too long and then divide it into multiple parts.
I am a typical American, or so I think I am. I had a decent nuclear family with a mom and a dad, I did reasonably well in high school and then went to college, then afterwards I had a crisis of conscious about what the hell do I do now?
Well my path lead me to Thailand for a teaching job and thankfully I had some information available to me from people that had already done this so that I knew what mistakes to not make. I have been doing this for near 4 years now and while I wouldn't say that teaching is actually for me and I don't think that this particular type of teaching is actually a good idea for anyone, I have learned some things along the way that I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
Regardless of how this all turns out, I am happy that I did this and living this accidental life has taught me a few things that I hope to carry one with me for the rest of my life. Let's start with the first thing: Consumerism.
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I was recently watching Mr. Robot and an episode came on where he was describing to his psychiatrist what it is that he doesn't like about modern society. In that segment a big part of what Elliot has to say is that the entirety of our lives, including and especially our digital lives, is built to make us spend more money on stupid crap that we do not need and does not benefit our lives in any way. Elliot in the scene is not actually outgoing enough to actually say this and it is a profound scene, but in the end he actually was just fascinating about saying what he said when in reality (in the show) he remained totally silent when his shrink asked him what he hated about society.
His imagined scene is what I think a lot of us are starting to learn about society and is something that unless you step outside of your USA / Western World bubble you may not even realize is something that the wool is being pulled over your eyes. The consumerism in USA is just incredible and it wasn't until I left there that I started to realize that it was as big of a problem as I thought it was.
We are convinced in USA, as I am sure most of the rest of the world is as well, that we have to spend money on things in order to be relevant. I bought into this while I lived there until my early 20's but it wasn't until I moved overseas and didn't actually have access to the various advertising channels that would convince me to buy stuff that I started to realize that I didn't actually need to buy stuff. I think the more important part was actually that they (the advertisers) didn't have access to me anymore.... and what a wonderful break this ended up being.
I realized by accident very quickly that I didn't need most of the things that I was constantly purchasing in the States such as the latest phone, fashion, or something like a television. I learned that most of the people in the world don't have and will never have these things and therefore they are irrelevant. I realized that simple basics were more than enough to live a happy life and the things that I used to consider as being necessities were actually options that only the wealthy in other countries even have access to.
Then I stumbled upon a video of one of the most famous YouTubers of all time and a seriously wealthy person that could easily buy all of what all of us have many times over
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I don't know how true this video is but I think we all know who Pewdiepie is and the fact that he could easily have 100 pairs of shoes. Yet he chooses not to. In Thailand with a size 13 foot, having a lot of shoes is not really an option anyway but I have shied away from buying lots of them but yet when I was in college, despite not being wealthy, I always had a dozen or so pairs of shoes most of which I never wore. Now that I am in Thailand, I have one pair of work shoes, one pair of trainers, and a pair of flip-flops. I don't really believe that Pewdiepie only has a single pair of shoes but I do think he is a minimalist despite being able to afford much much more than he has.
This is just a tiny piece of the consumerism pie that I am happy that living in Thailand has taught me and it did it by accident. Are there shoe stores here? Of course there are. However, seeing as how a vast majority of the population makes under a thousand dollars a month the major manufacturers of shoes realize that it would be a complete waste of time to try to market to this audience and therefore, very few people have many pairs of shoes. Very few people have many pairs of anything actually... and I think that is a good thing.
By the absence of commercialism, companies that do make things like this are forced to compete on price with one another and because of that I can get a 3-pack of socks for $1. This would not be possible in the consumeristic environment that I used to live in.
Pewdiepie can afford all the shoes that he wants yet he (at least according to the video) is a "one pair of shoes kind of guy" and I think that this is something that we should all take to heart. Honestly, why are we buying all of this stuff that we don't use?
the point
Since moving overseas to Thailand my desire to participate in consumerism has almost completely died out and I think that is a good thing. I no longer feel compelled to buy a bunch of stuff that I do not need just because I can. I hope to carry this mindset back to my life when I move back to USA in December of 2023 and realize that most of what we buy back there is a total waste of time and money.
There are other things I accidentally learned by living overseas but I'll have to get to that later.