There is a glossy magazine that comes with my Wall Street Journal subscription about one Saturday a month.
It has a format designed for carrying glossy high priced advertising for watches, diamonds, cars, handbags and the world of luxury items.
The content is about the crowd that regularly goes to Ibiza to show each other how important they are in the world of fashion, style and irrelevance.
I cannot resist these articles. One regular article shows the favorite objects of some rich dilettante. Their favorite watch, their favorite painting, and their favorite restaurant and hotel.
I read these articles with great pleasure. I have focused my life on simple living.
There are two reasons for simple living in my worldview. First it allowed me to devote my life to doing the things that I thought were important and rewarding. Second it allowed me to think in ways that have been unique and allowed me to explore entire worlds that were unknown to myself or anyone else. I got to be an explorer in a new world.
In some sense, reading this Wall Street Journal gloss, I am reassuring myself that I made the right decision in my life…. to avoid this world of gloss.
This theory of reassurance comes from the greatest of all sociological and marketing understanding: Cognitive Dissonance. CG theory suggests that once we have made a decision we must restructure our worldview to incorporate that decision. (This is sometimes simplified as ‘buyers remorse’). It is the observation that after a purchase, the buyer continues to look at prices and objects to assure himself he made the right decision.
Secondly, to remind myself that in my ventures around the world I have actually come to know many people who inhabit the world of Ibiza. I have met them under a variety of circumstances both leisure, romance and work. I've enjoyed their company but have never entered their of realm of gloss, frivolity and melodrama.