Ikea

It's Saturday, we still have some money in the bank, and we haven't paid our homage recently to the shrine of consumerism. So Ikea it is then. We spend what little we have on pointless soft-wood clobber. But this is a spiritual excrecise isn't it? As Scruton said, "When human beings cease their wandering and mark out a place as their own, their first instinct is to furnish it with things which have no function – ornaments, pictures, knick-knacks – or with things which, while possessing a function, are valued more for other reasons: for their associations, their beauty, their way of fitting in. This instinct for the purposelessness has a purpose – namely to make these objects into an expression of ourselves and of our common dwelling place, to endow them with marks of order, legitimacy and peaceful possession. In other words objects, when they form part of a home, are endowed with a soul. […] The enchantment of things in the home is part of a larger spiritual project. Home has its customs, its rituals, its special times and places. Or if it does not, it is so much the less a home." But does this include semi-disposable products from Ikea? Probably not!