Walk in, close the door, check my mail, flip the light switch and climb into bed.

This is my usual routine when I decide to go back to my dorm room for the last time for the night. It's monotonous, simple, boring and perfect. That's the way I want it. I have a habit so that in case I accidentally down a bottle of grain alcohol and inhale a vast amount of ether I could still finish my nighttime protocol blindfolded. With all its problems, tradition has its benefits.

Tradition allows people to make decisions without actually considering any factors. It's generally the most expedient route and generally can be done with little opposition. For example, a plethora of trials rely at least partially on precedence set by a previous case. This being said, tradition falls into the class of logical fallacies. Just because an action was performed and worked relatively well in an earlier incident does not imply it is necessarily the right choice in a current situation. There is a necessity to prove the congruities (or incongruities) between the two scenarios and how the differences are trivial enough for both to utilize the solution.

This fact is generally ignored. It's completely overlooked in many areas from politics to consumerism. I know the latter seems a bit of stretch, but consider Motorola. They achieved a measure of success with the RAZR and decided to beat the proverbial dead horse by creating the ROKR, SLVR and RIZR. These latter-day products had little in common with the original with the exception of rather gauche names. The idea seemed to be if you used the same naming system, the customers of the original would be inexplicably compelled to purchase the bastard stepchild. Looking at the ROKR's sales, this was just straight out wrong. Seriously, as a phone, the ROKR was just not particularly useful — or desirable for that matter.

I lodged a similar complaint against the news-media industry a few weeks ago, so this seems repetitive. This wasn't intentional; it's just that corporate stagnation can be at times rather alarming. Instead of designing new products, companies just love to create nice-sounding taskforces who make slight alterations to a preexisting product and rename it. Not only does this seem to work, they even win awards. Is manipulation of mass consumerism using perceived obsolescence something that should be encouraged? I'd say no, but America seems to say yes.

I wish I could stand up and rail against it, but I'm pretty guilty myself. I spend obscene money on clothes that look like regular stuff, just made with exotic blends (like cashmere-silk blended collared shirts). Do I need it? Not really. Do I even want it? That's a little more debatable. We all seem to have this desire to be constantly up-to-date. As if it really mattered if your iPod is a few years old, it still works. We get thrown around by corporations who need a way to avoid products with any lasting effects (hence pop as a music genre). As long as producers make slight derivations of already existing products, we'll just keep buying to keep up with the Joneses. Sinclair Lewis was right — we're pretty much screwed.