Proto-existentialist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote ‘Money is human happiness in the abstract, and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete sets his whole heart on money’.
Forgive me for quoting philosophy in the letters section of a local newspaper; for better or worse, being exposed to the knowledge of our ancestors in the form of bite-sized maxims is usually the closest most people will get to them.
Has Byron Bay lost its ability to enjoy happiness in the concrete? Is money now the town’s sole God? An abstract cheerfulness hanging over the town like a fog, clouding the minds of those who believe the experience of the area is an experience of natural beauty. An endless sea of boutique clothing stores, spreading out further and further like the tendrils of a half-dead octopus, only its suckers left alive, poised and ready. An ocean of developments turning once beloved market squares and empty spaces into coastal dystopian monstrosities, worshipping nothing but the dollar, no thought for community, with giant billboards covered in groan-inducing buzzwords that no honest person could really take seriously.
In the wise words of Chuck Berry, ‘Meanwhile, I was still thinking…’.
