This thread turned into a discussion on moderation, and triggered a long rant from me due to my disdain at the current state of the world. It's shroom related as I believe I wrote it the day after shrooming, and it contains some things I had been pondering.

Moderation is something that is learned. If you didn't learn it from your parents, then you have to learn it for yourself.

Our modern society, especially in the U.S. and also in Canada (where I'm from), has constantly pushed upon us to be a nation of consumers. Consumers are good for business, and business runs the country.

We are encouraged to rack up as much debt as possible... get a loan, get a credit card, get a line of credit, get a mortgage. Spend spend spend. Keep the economy going.

We are raised to be consumers, and everyone has the rights to own all sorts of things that people need -- cars, televisions, cell-phones, pagers, DVD players, stereos, the latest computer systems, video game systems, huge collections of videos, CD's and video games, piles of clothing for fashions that change every year, a rainbow of makeup, enough skin-care products and anti-aging products to sink a ship, libraries of self-help books, endless vitamins, suppliments, diet bars, diet drinks and diet pills to go along with our Big Macs, Whoppers, KFC chicken, extra-large size fries and gallons and gallons of soda.

In the city I live in, more homeless street people have cell-phones and pagers than anyone else. I met a guy living in a cardboard box that had a cell-phone.

In the U.S., they did a study on poverty and found out that people that could barely afford to live crammed in a tiny little shack, who had to go to food banks for food all had televisions.

Of course you need to have a television... how else could they jam thousands of commercials down your throat to entice you to buy more things you don't need?

Everywhere you go in a big city, you are assaulted with advertising. Billboards are everywhere. Any space that is available contains advertising. Walls, signs, huge video panel displays, posters, roof-signs and hub caps on taxi-cabs, banners on buildings, store displays, it's just endless.

Your door and mailbox gets filled with fliers on a constant basis. My email box gets hundreds of spam advertisements daily. Very few websites are free of banner advertising, and many pop up extra browser windows.

Besides radio, television, magazines and newspapers which are all filled to the brim with advertising, even the home videos you purchase are filled with previews, and the packaging even includes brochure advertising. With most new DVDs you can't even skip over the previews and advertising (especially the Disney ones). Even though you purchased the DVD, you are forced to endure five minutes of previews before you can watch the movie -- every time you play it.

At least there isn't any advertising on CD's ... yet. Soon enough new digital music formats will include some advertising.

I'm surprised that books don't include advertising between each chapter.

Even the movies you watch are filled with product placements to appeal to our subconscious.

As a society we have become a mass of people caring for little else other than what we can buy next. What's hot and what's not. What's in, and what's out.

New fads cause mass frenzies of wants and desires, and the people that create them get a far greater kick out of it than the consumers. It's a little like tossing a handful of fish-food into a fish-pond and watching them all swarm for the food. Or pigeons if you like that better.

Well, I'm tired of being a fish. People have been referred to as fish (or sheep) for far too long. It started in the Bible with Jesus teaching the apostles to be "fishers of men", and Jesus being a sheppard of people. Heck, it likely started long before that.

Even today we say, "the are plenty of fish in the sea", when someone loses a lover.

I'm not a fish, and I'm not a sheep. I'm a man, and I have a mind of my own.

I don't have to join into the feeding frenzy with the other fish to get some fish-food.

There are more important things in life than television, cell phones, fashion trends and sports cars.

Things like health, happiness, inner peace and family values.

The "hippies" were right. They just failed to get the message across, or maybe it got lost along the way the same way that old children's game of "telephone" where a story is passed along from child to child and you find out how it changed from the the original message to the end message.

I'm sure most organized religions are like that as well. A well intentioned message of goodness spread from person to person, and as it travels, it gets changed slightly -- sometimes for the personal agenda of the messenger, and sometimes due to misunderstanding.

Not everywhere in the world is like North America. Quite a few old-world countries (Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, etc) have completely different views on the world, and in these countries things are always quiet and calm. People don't get into bar fights, children don't run around yelling and screaming all over the place. Everyone is very well mannered and respectful.

A lot can be learned from old-world European countries.

Life in these countries may seem boring to a lot of people, but are these people truly happy? The endless wanting, needing and grasping for these desires certainly cannot bring peace and happiness.

You need to be happy with yourself to be truly happy. Besides the bare necessities, material things do not bring true happiness.

The more "toys" we have... movies, music, books, computers, games, gadgets, trinkets, fashions, makeup, lotions, potions, stuff, things, junk -- are we really happy with them? We're so busy working for money to buy these things, and to pay off our huge debts that we don't have time to enjoy any of them.

I don't have time to read a fraction of the books I own, or watch half the DVD's I have collected, let alone the pile of computer games I have that would each take hundreds of hours to complete.

By the time I find the spare hours here and there to play one of these games that I would really like to play, several sequels will exist, and my current computer system will be too obsolete to play them.

The fast pace of society today only allows us pleasures that are quick... and generally these are limited to half-hour items on a daily basis (TV episodes, meals and sex) and two-hour items on a weekly basis (movies, shows, plays, clubbing, etc).

Having twenty hours to read a full novel is often spread over two months.

Having 200 hours to play a complex computer game usually requires two months of four hours per night. Who has the time for that? What if you buy several games per year?

Now toss a relationship into the picture. Or how about a few kids?

In this crazy life of being a consumer, we really need to start simplifying our lives before we burn out.