A fool and his money soon part. A quote from a man in the 16th century still holds true as we live in a society of consumers and producers. A smart consumer is skeptical and does not buy into new things without doing proper research while a foolish consumer will spend all of their money on things that won't raise their quality of life. While there is nothing wrong with buying a soda every now and then, always buying soda, or any other mass produced junk food for that matter, is dumb, and you're only hurting yourself financially and physically by dishing out cash for those comfort foods. But not all dumb purchases come from your supermarket. One such example is the diamond.
Most resources available for purchase are priced based on how difficult it is to produce, what the demand for it is, and how much it costs to produce. It's a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea. For an example, beef is a high-quality sources of fat, protein, carbs, and various other nutrients. What cut you get is how much you pay. Beef is important because it's relatively inexpensive and can supply your body the stuff it needs. Beef is a good food, but what if people decided to wear New York strip as shoes? Well, now the price of New York strip goes up and we get to see who's an idiot when we walk on the streets. But the problem with the diamond is it is a valuable material, but essentially it only cost so much because everyone buys into the peer pressure of needing a diamond to convince the girls of your dreams that you aren't a loser.
Diamonds are useful in the same way that gold and silver are. Diamonds have been found to transfer heat very efficiently and are tough, the toughest of all the rocks actually. There is a lot that can be done with diamonds to advance our technology and solve issues that we as a species face. But just like the point I made with the beef, the diamond isn't helping us much if its worn on someone's finger to show their monogamous relationship (if they take it off, BOOM, they are now single and ready to mingle. Ridiculous, right?). The importance of the diamond is what it symbolizes, which can easily be done with a hemp bracelet or anything else really. Following the crowd is pretty lame, and the cost of you being lame in this situation drives up the price of a valuable resource, which in turn hinders how fast we can fix the problems created by the same greed that got you that diamond.
Instead of diamonds, I believed we should encourage creativity. If you meet the love of your life, carve them something out of wood or weave them an exception tapestry that would make Arachne jealous. Or, if you really want to show them just how special they are, instead of buying an overpriced rock, travel with your partner to the far and in between, creating special memories that will forever live in both of your minds, making you two even closer. Just do something that hasn't been done literally thousands of times every day: presenting a shiny, hard stone in a way that you think hasn't been done before. It's been done, and the fact that it's a ceremony that almost everyone partakes in makes it even less special and will make signing those divorce papers even easier. Just saying.
