Not possesed at all

“But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work. We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.”

“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

I wonder if one of the causes of animosity towards “entitled millennials” is that many millennials are poor people who look rich.  There’s this growing class of people who wear nice clothes, have fancy new electronic gadgets, go out to eat nice food… and will never own a home or have a retirement fund or put a child through college.

Furthermore, the technological tools that millennials use daily, such as cell phones, are seen as luxury items by older geneations because those were luxury items back then. But technology changes. Cell phones used to require their own backpack, but now they fit in your back pocket. Over time, technology becomes more accessible and more affordable. Cell phones and the Internet are not so much luxuries anymore as they are necessities.

Reblogging with especial emphasis on the “daily parts of 2010’s life are seen as extravagance because they used to be luxury items” (like cel phones.) I think it’s taking a long time for the semiotics of that to catch up with reality.