Black Friday and my quiet protest against over-consumption: Bird Lovegod

I suspect this HBF will be a little more subdued than previous years, the cost of living crisis, a brace of perma-wars, and constant reminders that we are destroying our planet all conspire to take the glittery edge of what should be the most rapacious day of the year.

HBF is a well earned holiday from caring about these pressing issues and a fine time to get the shopping in for Christmas, whatever Christmas means. ‘Buy more stuff again’ day I guess.

Happy Black Friday. I mean it.

After all, there’s no use raging against the machine, there really isn’t. Either partake, or do not. Either buy more stuff, or do not.

One Amazon falls, another Amazon rises. I’m feeling pretty zen about the whole thing. It’s all a game.

Speaking of games, I do feel sorry for Rishi Sunak, he’s stuck on level 101 of the Deportation Game, he’s head down grinding with a singular focus, trying to export a couple of hundred asylum seekers to Rwanda at any cost, so far around a million pounds each.

He thinks this one achievement, a frustrating boss level on a game with in app purchases, will mean he progresses to the next stage.

We all know he’ll find the joy short-lived. It will make no difference. But as target fixations go, he’s all in.

It’s almost sad, pitiful, but those emotions have no place in Government, so one last go at Turning The Boats Back.

Such a frustrating game. If only someone had thought about this before Brexit caused it all.

Where was I? Ah yes, calling for a ceasefire of consumption. Mildly and gently suggesting perhaps don’t buy more stuff than you need.

Just a soft still voice, a lone one really, calling in the wilderness. No need to have a vote on it, I don’t want to cause a split.

Speaking of ceasefires, please, Labour Party, try to resist the urge to tear yourself apart over the entirely academic question of whether or not to call for one between Hamas and Israel.

Neither side are interested, or listening, and as the opposition party of a foreign country, you have zero influence in the matter. Some things, awful as they are, just have to play out. Sometimes we need the wisdom to see what we cannot change.

Save a life, if the loss of life is abhorrent to you. We cannot stop what we cannot stop, be it the billion wheels of capitalism, the machinations of Big Oil, or the turning of the boats.

I’m moderately sceptical of protesting, it might make the protesters feel like they are doing something, but does it change the thing being protested about?

Often not, not at all. If poverty horrifies you, don’t protest about it, do something for someone in poverty to ease their pain. If war horrifies you, as it should, make peace with your enemies and lower the temperature of the human cauldron a notch. If over-consumption revolts you, revolt by not buying.

Rise above, and you will see, all will pass away. And only peace remains.

Bird Lovegod is a Christian commentator and business consultant.