I am writing this from KL, Malaysia.

We went site seeing last night – but that was the ‘envelope’ motive. The underlying reason was to shop. Lucky that shops here close at 10pm – or the night would have been very long.

Our trek across Malaysia once again exposed the fabric of 21^st century living to my attention– consumerism driving the evolution of mankind.

On the foreshores of Kota Kinabalu, the natives set up their makeshift markets to sell basic food. Further inland, the township streets close off to through traffic at sunset and the street stalls pop up. These markets do the handbags, shoes, clothes, electronics etc that is a direct parallel of our Paddys. Then there are the proper shops that try to out-position each other for foot traffic.

In KL, the shops are a lot more upmarket. Flamboyant shop fit-outs entice the curiosity of the passers-by – all in the bid to wrestle the wallets out of their pockets and handbags. As the shopping gets bigger and better, so does the buildings and cities that house the shops. Human development is directly linked to the ability to shop.

All animals and plants around us are driven by a very simple development process. Eat to grow.

Humans are a bit more complicated. Once we have had our meal, we take on other pursuits. We have discovered that there is only so much that we can eat to maximise our survival rate. So, life must be more than just nourishing our bodies – and consumerism is the perfect next step.

The whole point of life is to play (for those who are looking for meaning and life purpose, this is a hard pill to swallow). And consumerism provides the perfect playground for the game with no limits. Multi levelled and multiplayer optimised, the consumer game drives the development of the current age of mankind.

Businesses want us to buy their products and workers get jobs because products are sold. Warning bells ring in central banks when we stop spending and our financial systems get the wobbles. Consumerism is so deep in our lives that it is impossible to extract ourselves out of its web.

So, shopping we go because our lives depend on it…