Sisyphus, a Corinthian king of Greek mythology, was condemned by Olympian gods to pay a heavy price for his greed
by rolling an enormous stone to the peak of a steep hill's crown and every time he'd reach the top the stone quickly rolled back down.
* * * * *
Throughout the Dark Ages of Europe the mass of the medieval population became the virtual slaves of the rich through the process of feudalization.
In return for their lord's protection serfs had the right to work his estate, but they could never leave his service, making them HIS from cradle to grave.
In such a subsistence economy you produce just what you need to survive. Since there was no upward mobility there was nothing for which to strive.
But after this system had gone on for awhile the feudal overlords began realizing there was more money made in wool than in farms, so they began medieval downsizing.
They enclosed the bulk of their estates with "moats" of protective hedges, used fewer serfs to raise sheep than to farm, and left the poor to their own defenses.
Then after the rent wars and food riots the rich installed capitalism and got the poor to buy it by saying they could rise from their servile position
in society by amassing money and manufactured material goods. Thus the quest for economic imitation of the rich was begun by the poor.
By using the carrot of future reward to tempt an upwardly mobile donkey, and constantly moving the tasty bait forward you create a consumption-based economy.
Capitalism requires constant purchases of industrial goods made to self-destruct so the people who bought them are forced to buy more making sure the consumer is continually plucked.
To maintain this perpetual demand is the Sisyphean task of the consumer to afford and religiously buy the industrial output of the producer.
The "Upper Classes" insure this by dangling their lifestyle carrot in the face of the poor, convincing them that conspicuous consumption is what all REAL Americans strive for.
Advertising unrelentingly describes this in magazines and on TV and in movies as the possessions required for inclusion in respectable American society.
Vi's works appear widely both in print and online. She conducts Poetry Workshops and gives readings in Central New York. Her latest chapbook is "Sine Qua Non Antiques (an Arcanum of History, Geography and Treachery).
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