A visit to IKEA

Today I visited one of Brisbane's two IKEA stores -- a mammoth two-floored warehouse at Springwood. It is cunningly designed like a maze, so that you must walk the entire length and breadth of the store before you can escape!

I couldn't help but think of Socrates, that ancient Greek philosopher, who loved to visit the marketplace. When asked why, since he lived very abstemiously, he replied: “I love to go there and discover how many things I am perfectly happy without.”

Surely IKEA, and similar establishments, are cathedrals to our modern day religion of consumerism.  Here on display are enough goods of every kind to clothe and house a goodly portion of the world's homeless and impoverished.  Instead they sit there unused, for the most part "things I am perfectly happy without".