Black Friday is an annual part of post-Thanksgiving observances and Christmas season kickoff. In all likelihood, you participated in it to at least some degree. That participation may have consisted of anything from lining up after sleeping off Thursday’s dinner and clamoring for the deals you wanted to take advantage of to going out Friday night to survey the damage and see whether the chaos remained.

We are in the middle of a cycle of economic recession and recovery, consumer confidence is low and unemployment is high. Yet we insist, just like we have for years, on going out and spending all kinds of money on all kinds of gadgets, clothes, toys and jewelry. Sales this year were up 6.6 percent from last year, at $11.4 billion.

Maybe it’s just a matter of who is spending money on credit to stimulate the economy. For whatever reason, it is acceptable and encouraged for individuals to go out, spend money and create demand for cheap imports, but when the government tries to stimulate the economy by putting people in the United States to work providing services, we’re on the high road to socialism and betray the War for Independence.

That verdict comes even as Black Friday shoppers mar their fellow customers with pepper spray, robberies and shootings above and beyond the ordinary (and it may be a strong indicator of our social health that “ordinary” is an appropriate word here) pushing, shoving and swearing at shoppers who get in the way of greed. This is at a time when we all preach a spirit of giving, charity and kindness.

And then there’s today, Cyber Monday, when even more deals appear that shoppers can take advantage of online. And with spending projected to be at $1.2 billion this year, maybe it’s for the best that so many of us, having lost the social skills that serve as a foundation to go out in public and interact with others, confine ourselves at home and shop online.

Shopping has become a way of life as we apparently discard fiscal temperance for self-gratification. Many news outlets offered tips for surviving Black Friday excursions and making a successful shopping experience. Families make their shopping plans while preparing Thanksgiving dinner or in its aftermath, and some of the legendary stories we tell this week will inevitably revolve around the weekend’s shopping.

We should wake up. Until we snap out of our self-absorbed quest for material satisfaction, we won’t solve any of the problems confronting us, from unemployment and banking to pollution, national security and looser morals.