Consumption Junction, What's our Function......

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's DOWNER time, brought to you by the good folks at MM&M, purveyors of the finer points of contemplation the world over. As you all should know by now, THE Michael is not one to allow you to blithely live your lives as though all was well and good, and that's the toll his readers pay to enjoy the words of wisdom and/or utter lunacy that graces the pages of this, the premiere blog of all blogs. (If you find any difficulty accepting these proclamations, please feel free to blame the lobotomy, as it's not the cure-all it's cut out to be) and (believe it or not, that pun was not premeditated, but I will take full credit for it nonetheless).
The concept which I am about to inflict you with now, my dear and loyal readers, is that of CONSUMPTION, and it's fellow association, CONSUMERS. Stay with me now, this may take awhile, but there's a point to be made, eventually.
We all at one point or another, if the old neurons are firing in the right order, ask ourselves or anyone who might have some idea, just what our purpose here on Earth might be. You can settle for "Eat, shit, and be merry", or, if you have a few minutes to blow, might go for "Cure cancer and end hunger as we know it". The question has been asked for eons with various levels of seriousness, but it has yet to be answered to any real satisfaction, unless of course you are willing just to take Douglas Adam's word for it that the answer is simply 42. All that being said, and I apologize profusely for having had to say it, why don't we just answer that question by what Mankind has already done for thousands of years and will continue to do until we finally put ourselves and our planet out of our collective miseries? Have you guessed what I'm getting at yet? NO? OK, then, here comes, ready or not.
CONSUMPTION. That's it. Period. End of discussion. THE answer. That's what it all amounts to. Nothing deeper than that.
The masses have been labeled in all sorts of ways thru the ages. Hunter/Gatherers, minions, peasants, crowds, mobs, workers, you name it, we've had a catch phrase. The Communists decided it would please the average joe to no end to be referred to, and catered to, as "The Workers", although in practice it didn't really play out that way all too well. When that idea of paradise didn't pan out and Capitalism finally came out on top as the way things work in a perfect world, we adopted a new moniker, "Consumers". Now tell me, what term in the history of mankind has ever been so appropriate? Consumers......indeed......what does this one species, set apart from all others, do better than any other?
We CONSUME, and we do it WELL! Now, in the grand scheme of this closed system which is the planet Earth, there is one truth that has always held sway and made this tiny rock spinning thru the cosmos one of those rare oasis's of life, and that is BALANCE. All things within this ecosystem taketh and giveth back, in one form or another. Animals breath O2 and produce CO2. Plants breath CO2 and produce O2. Plant eaters eat plants, and are eaten by predators, who although fewer in numbers, control the more prolific prey, keeping everything in balance. Even predators at the top of the food chain don't exactly get carte blanche, giving back to the system with their rotting carcasses. Each and every animal, plant, organism, in one way or another occupies a niche that forms a symbiotic chain which, when broken, echos thru the entire system in a negative fashion until nature somehow takes up the slack and returns everything to balance. So where do WE fit into all this?
As a singular pox on all the land, we do nothing but CONSUME, giving NOTHING back to the system. We spoil our own nest with our pollution, our trash, our reproductive rate, our prolific use of poisons and other horrors in our never ending efforts to subjugate our environment. We build, we pave, we strip mine, we deforest, we burn, we slash, and we build a Walmart every three miles. We continually extract natural resources with no clear effort to replenish anything or find alternatives that are less destructive. We have pumped humongous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and dumped huge amounts of mercury and other toxins into the oceans, and now we find the planet heating up and are finding fewer and fewer fish in the ocean that we have tried our damnedest to turn into one big sewer. And now our cousins down south in South America have slashed and burned in true capitalist fashion the very lungs of our planet, the rainforest, the last great cleaner and producer of breathable air the entire planet has relied on to sustain life.
Yes, my friends, wether or not you want to accept it or not, our purpose in life as demonstrated by action, and not philosophy, is simply to consume, nothing more, nothing less. Oh, yes, we write great poetry and plays, sculpt fine sculptures, build great metropolis's, make love, and create all manner of uplifting music, but it's all a sideshow to what we have taken our intellect and done with it. We have in essence taken all these thousands of years to craft ourselves the finest tomb a species ever built for itself. All the dinosaurs had to leave behind were their bones. We'll have New York City. Oh, that, and Walmarts. Lots and lots of Walmarts.