Danny ChaiI find that I struggle more with materialism when I’m in Houston. What it is is everyone has a house, many people have big houses, and everyone wants a bigger house. And that rubs off on you. You start thinking, hey I should have a big house also. And that disturbs me. It’s a lot easier in the Bay Area, where few people can even afford a place. Just having a condo/townhouse is a big freaking deal there. People don’t even dream of estates in gated communities, like everyone seems to have here in Houston. And once you become accustomed to living without, that kind of permeates your mindset.
I think superficiality is more of a problem in the Bay Area than Houston though. I mean like caring about how you look. I’m basing this on essentially zero data. Like, I went to work out here and it was almost empty. In the Bay Area, the gyms are all jam packed. A lot more people there care about how they look. Also, here, everyone’s fat and they don’t seem to care about it much. Bay Area in general is pretty health conscious, and I don’t think it’s primarily for noble reasons. They just all want to look good. I dunno.
Anyway, everywhere is materialistic and everywhere is superficial. It’s just, I think different regions are more and less so than others, and that’s interesting to me. But like all things, I’m probably wrong about this.