Obedience.

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I went to a particular supermarket last night because they had a couple of special offers on that I wanted to take advantage of. I don't go there often because whilst they are cheap for some things, they tend to be things I don't always buy and they can be expensive for things that I do buy. Ready meals, convenience food, crisps, sweets and the high-on-calories but low-on-nutrition food tends to be cheap. Fresh, unprepared vegetables on the other hand can be quite expensive. Whilst we were in there DH asked "do we need any peppers?" meaning bell peppers. I looked over at the display and said "not at those prices!" I do wonder if they are catering to a specific type of customer or a specific type of customer gravitates to Asda. Either way there were quite a few of them in evidence and I find it depressing. Some of them seem so compliant. We ended up stuck behind a family with a trolly full of the above mentioned cheap things who shuffled around and, quite literally, stopped and gawped as one at an end of isle display of overpriced shiney electronic tat "Christmas Gifts". A lot of very similar people were drawn, like moths to a flame, to the same thing. I just found it quite shocking that they reacted in a way that it shows they have been conditioned like that and their lives are set in those patterns, carefully carved out for them by a consumer machine that sees them as profitable automatons. It genuinely scares me when I see the kind of well-trained reaction to consumerism I saw last night. I keep chickens and they know certain sounds mean they are getting some food - and this is what it reminded me of. It was an unthinking, conditioned reaction. The worst thing is that they were unaware of what they were doing. There was no thought process going on, just "see shiney thing, want shiney thing,". Have you seen people like this?