Designer Jeans are Extensions of Ego

This article was originally published by Technorati on 27 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Is this a joke? $345 for a pair of jeans! Some of us are hopelessly out of touch.

In a recent Good Morning America segment, reporter Marysol Castro detailed an extensive scientific, double-blind, peer-reviewed (not) study pitting a $29 pair of jeans from Old Navy against a $200 pair from Sacks Fifth Avenue. We got a glimpse of one price tag that read $345.00.

One woman claimed to have 2000 pairs of jeans in her closet. And later, Elle Magazine's Fashion News Director, Anne Slowey, actually said, "Most people are charging around $200, so you definitely want to get as much value out of that investment as you can."

No, four shares of Wal-mart will run you about $200, that's an investment. Unless you're name is Levi Strauss, denim is not an investment. Does that woman with 2000 pairs of jeans in her closet realize that at a going rate of $200, she's pissed away several pairs of Sex-and-the-City level designer shoes and handbags? Probably not. ($400,000 for those of you keeping score at home.)

Top Ten Signs You May Be Over-Identified With Your Team

The article that started it all . . .

This article was originally published by Technorati on 2 February 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

The AP has reported for years on a Minnesota farmer who has vowed he won't shave until the Vikings win the Super Bowl. 97-year-old Emmet Pearson's beard remains in place and 36-years long. He made the vow in 1974, the last time the Vikings made it to the big game.

While Mr. Pearson's stick-to-it-iveness is laudable--people these days don't keep vows like they used to--and funny, it points up the sort of identification with groups like sports teams that Eckhart Tolle in his seminal book on spirituality A New Earth says is one from the ego's playbook.

"One of the ways in which the ego attempts to escape the unsatisfactoriness of personal selfhood," Tolle writes, "is to enlarge and strengthen its sense of self by identifying with a group--a nation, political party, corporation, institution, sect, club, gang, football team."

Bingo! Isn't that Farmer Pearson in a nutshell? This list takes in a lot of us.

What sports teams accomplish or fail to accomplish really has nothing whatsoever to do with us. And yet we behave as if it does.

Here are ten signs you may be over-identifying with your team this Super Bowl: