10 deadly sins of modern society

We live in a consumer society and, whether we want it or not, we play by its rules, sometimes without realizing it. Of course, we amuse ourselves with the thoughts that life is under control and everything is fine, but is it so?

From this issue, you will learn about a dozen sins of modern society. Be honest with yourself, admit which of the sins has become a part of your life…

1. Credit cards

Petya Klyushkin receives 30 thousand rubles a month. He also has several credit cards with a total debt of 100 thousand rubles. For servicing this loan, Petya pays ten percent of his salary to banks every month: three thousand. It turns out almost a church tithe. If Petya worshipped the Golden Calf, he would probably be satisfied with this situation. However, Petya prays to other gods, and quietly hates his banks for monthly extortion of money. At the same time, Petya cannot slowly pay off the loan and stop paying tribute to usurers. Firstly, he is tightly held on the hook by such a technique as "minimum payment": if Petya stops spending money from credit cards, he will have to live on half a salary for several months, which he cannot afford. And secondly, there are so many temptations around, so many things-that-money-can-buy… That Petya sees no other way out but to continue to feed the banks that are fattening on his misfortune year after year.

Funny fact: Petya has been dreaming about his own business for a long time, while the profitability of thirty percent per annum would more than suit him. However, Petya cannot organize an absolutely iron-clad gesheft — pay off the debt to the banks and start putting interest on the loan in his pocket. The matrix does not allow it.

2. Cars

Kolya Pyatachkov loves cars. He used to ride the subway, then saved up money for a Lada. Now he is moving on a borrowed lancer. He has little money, often he has to save on the most important things, such as vacations or doctors. But Kolya can no longer imagine life without his car. He needs to give a loan for a car, pay for additional equipment sold by the dealer and absurdly expensive insurance. He needs to solve a lot of small problems with parking, with scratches, with the replacement of consumables and with warranty repairs. He needs to change the tires once a season and fill himself a full tank three times a week. Kolya, in principle, does not complain. Each individual cash injection into the car is quite powerful. Only if Kolya had carefully calculated the cost of owning his treasure, he would have found out that a narrow-eyed four-wheeled friend devours a third of his salary and half of his free time every month.

Could Kolya buy himself a good old-fashioned Chisel instead of a Lancer, so as not to bother at all with a hard hat, rust / scratches, or expensive spare parts? To leave the car anywhere, and to fix it for a small price in a good service near the house, without paper fuss and without queues? I probably could have. But if you tell Kolya that he chose a car not according to the level, Kolya will not even send you to the ass with your advice. Kolya will just make surprised eyes and twist his finger at his temple.

3. Expensive things

Gleb Shcherblyunich is not rich enough to buy cheap things. More precisely, he is not rich at all. Gleb is a beggar, and he often does not have enough money even for a cup of steaming coffee in the vending machine on the floor below his office. However, Gleb does not know how to say "fuck you, it's too expensive for me". Because of this, he constantly buys things for himself, at the sight of which even a much more affluent person immediately closes cold green paws on his throat. A leather jacket worth two salaries? I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things. And I don't care that Gleb doesn't understand sizes and styles, which is why he looks like the son of a fence in this jacket. A laptop of the latest model for eighty thousand rubles? I'm not rich enough to buy cheap things. I will take a loan at insane interest rates, I will eat oatmeal porridge with salt for two years and ride the subway like a hare, but I will have a beautiful silver laptop gathering dust on my shelf.

The question is, why wouldn't Gleb be more modest, and not buy things a little worse, but ten times cheaper? Yes, everything is simple. Gleb is too lazy to spend three hours of time to equalize prices and characteristics in order to calculate the pros and cons of buying. It is easier for him to cut with a cavalry hand and say "I decided, I'm buying". In addition, despite the leaky shoes and duct-taped glasses, Gleb is shy to tell the sellers that he is a beggar.

4. Whining

Yegor Oskopchik constantly tells his friends stories, one is simply more amazing than the other. About the crisis. About some kind of political party, rallies. Egor is always on edge, he always has someone wrong: then the boss, then the traffic cop, then the popularly elected president of the Russian Federation. Of course, we live in a free country, and Yegor has the right to cover anyone with genitals in a circle of friends... but Yegor is constantly suffering because of other people's problems. The habit of getting into other people's problems regularly makes him feel oppressive powerlessness, realize that something is bad somewhere, and he can't change anything. If someone had explained to Yegor that our world is arranged unfairly, and that the only way to make it better is to start with himself, Yegor would probably have been in some kind of leadership position long ago. Egor's brains and hands are in place, the energy is rushing out of him. Unfortunately, Yegor prefers to spend his inexhaustible energy not on creative activities, but on exposing and punishing people who, in Yegor's opinion, behave incorrectly.

Egor considers himself a well-adapted person to life: he knows how to make a scandal and stand on his own, can even give in the face on occasion. Friends look at Yegor with poorly concealed pity. Since Yegor constantly gets into scandals, fights, and even some ridiculous courts out of the blue.

5. Unwillingness to learn

Dasha Gundogubova spent ten years at school and six years at the institute. It is terrible to count how many tens of thousands of hours she spent in dusty classrooms, listening intently to the mournful muttering of tongue-tied teachers. Dasha is proud of her blue diploma and never misses an opportunity to show off the loud letters of the educational institution that she managed to sit out. At the same time, Dasha is too lazy to spend one day to learn how to work normally in the Word. Because of this, she makes documents three times longer than she could, while the documents turn out to be very ugly. Dasha does not see any problem in this. The authorities unfairly consider Dasha a fool, and pay her half as much as the much less intelligent Katya. So Katya, despite all her shortcomings, still mastered the Word at a decent level.

Dasha is also too lazy to spend a few evenings to finish driving courses. Therefore, Dasha does not feel the dimensions of her beautiful car, parks for 10 minutes where a skilled driver would park in a few seconds, and at least once every six months gets into the most ridiculous accidents.

Before the pile, Dasha has a very tight lock on the front door. Every evening Dasha spends a long time in it with the key, shuddering at every rustle in the front door and pressing the key from different sides. At the same time, it does not even occur to Dasha to spend five minutes of time and find a solution to the problem on the Internet. Unfortunately, at the time of issuing the diploma, Dasha forgot to say that the freebie was over, and that the duty to force herself to study was now assigned to her personally.

6. Ethanol loop

Yura Skobleplyukhin periodically looks in the mirror and thinks that it would be necessary to finally sign up for a gym: remove the beer tummy and cheer up the muscles with dumbbells. However, Yura works five days a week, and after work drinks a mug or two of diluted ethanol. He is not an alcoholic at all: Yura believes that alcohol in small doses is, if not useful, then at least not particularly harmful. However, work and alcohol structure his time so well that he has absolutely no time to sign up for a gym, and there is no longer any strength left after labor feats for sports feats.

Yura has no acute reasons to change the rhythm of her life. It's just that Yura looks fifteen years older than her age and feels a little lousy all the time… but in general, everything is ok. The matrix holds Yura with a steel grip. Yura has, frankly, few chances to tear her fingers from her throat.

7. Bad teeth

Grisha Snegiryak does not suffer from toothache at all. He knows that he has deep caries on fourteen teeth... but right now nothing hurts and a visit to the dentist, like, can be postponed for now. Grisha understands that caries is not a runny nose, it will not pass by itself. Grisha understands that inserting prostheses is both long, painful, and expensive. Grisha understands that it is not worth delaying a visit to the dentist. But he has so many different things to do right now, and he has so many urgent expenses right now… Well, Grisha will cure one tooth now. And what will change? After all, there will still be thirteen patients left. The Matrix rarely leaves its slaves the strength to take care of their health. The Matrix requires the slaves to pay its bills first.

8. Weddings and birthdays

Alice Skotinenok is getting married. Alice works as an assistant manager, her chosen one is a junior technical support engineer. The budget of a newly created family is forty thousand rubles a month. The wedding budget is five hundred thousand. Why doesn't Alice sign quietly at the registry office and go to celebrate the exchange of rings together with her husband in some quiet restaurant? Why does she need this petrosyanisty toastmaster, why does she need these shameful contests, why does she need this crowd of drunken cattle clumsily stamping their feet under Verka Serdyuchka? Why is it necessary to get into debt, ruin parents, feed and water people who, let's be honest, are quite able to eat and drink at their own expense? Alice is not a fool and understands that if she does not arrange a wedding, no one will pay attention to it: they will shrug their shoulders and forget the next day.

Alice has two reasons to spend the annual income of the family in nowhere. First, the Matrix commands it in the face of our customs and traditions. Secondly, Alice wants to show off in a white dress and Alice believes that a year of work of two people is quite a normal price for several wedding photos. Of course, the defenders of a naive girl could say now that a wedding happens once in a lifetime… But there are still birthdays, funerals, New Year celebrations. How much money will Alice spend annually on these stupid gatherings?

9. Minor expenses

Vasya Zhimobryukhov works as a plumber on call. There is a thousand, here five hundred rubles... in general, it should have turned out a good income. However, Vasya usually does not have more than a couple of thousand in his wallet, he is almost always broke. Why? Because as Vasya earns money, so he spends it: not counting. Five hundred rubles for a taxi home. A thousand rubles for lunch at a restaurant. It seems like, you work and work... and there is no money as there is no.

If Vasya had got himself a notebook and started writing down all his income and expenses there, the hairs on his ass would have moved with horror. Vasya would have seen that eating in a restaurant is not a miserable thousand at a time, as he thought, but fifty thousand a month, six hundred thousand a year. Vasya would have seen that a taxi is convenient and comfortable, but two months of traveling on minibuses will allow him to buy a new computer, which he has been dreaming about for three years. However, as befits a normal Matrix slave, Vasya does not consider it necessary to count money.

10. Advertising

Lena Vurdalakina drinks Cola, smokes marlboros, chews stimorol and eats gambugers in three throats at McDonald's. She always smells like Dolce gabbana, and Lena carries her iPhone in a luivitton bag. At the same time, Lena is sure that advertising does not affect her in any way, and a sick stomach and an empty wallet are her own choice. Predatory snouts from TV screens support Lena in her naive delusion in a chorus: "You are a free person, Lenochka, you are an intelligent and beautiful woman, you always absolutely voluntarily and independently choose to whom of us you will dutifully take your next salary."