On a recent flight from Dubai to London I made the mistake of watching a documentary about the Burj Al Arab, one of Dubai’s most costly hotels.  The reverential tone of the commentary was nauseating.  It helped me realize again how all ideologies distort language for their own purposes.  The ideology of Consumerism is no exception.  Like all ideologies it takes words with which we are familiar – words like luxury, opulence, and exclusivity – and gives them a moral gloss.  Needless to say, there’s no place in the lexicon of Consumerism for terms such as vulgarity, decadence, or greed, the words that come to a sane person’s mind when learning you can buy a cappuccino sprinkled with tiny fragments of gold leaf at the Burj Al Arab.  It’s important to stay on message.

Dubai is a relative newcomer to the list of places where the devotees of lavish spending like to congregate, but what it lacks in pedigree it makes up for in commitment to the cause of profligacy.  It makes Monte Carlo look restrained.  There’s something very fitting about the fact that Dubai grew out of the desert.  It remains arid and strangely lifeless in spite of all the effort and money spent to convince us that it’s sophisticated and elegant.