After a recent blog post, a friend called me out for anti-Capitalism, and asked me "Is there anything you do not blame on Consumerism or Capitalism?" The really short answer is: No. I don't blame everything bad on Consumerism. First of all, I think there is a place in society for Markets and Capitalist business. So, I am not against a pro-social form of Market economy. Second, I actually blame everything on Sin: The infection of human nature that manifests itself in selfish and predatory behavior to attain short-term material goals, at the expense of long term personal wellbeing and societal health. But saying everything is the result of sin can be a really easy way to avoid responsibility to change: If there is a universal condition called sin that infects and affects us all, who am I to change it? Who are we? We are better off being fatalistic, giving in, and going along.
But when we name how sin functions in a certain system, and how that system acts to focus and amplify the symptoms of sin, then we can devise counter-measures to deal with sin. We can be aware of the strategies and processes the system uses to dehumanize us and disconnect us from meaning and value in life, as God's grace empowers us and sensitizes us to those strategies and processes. So, at this point in world history, we have one over-arching ideological and socio-economic system which holds our entire planet in its thrall: Global Corporate Consumerism. So let's talk about that...
Now, truth be told, I’m fine with Capitalism within certain clearly constrained markets, when it deals with goods and services that are non-essential to human life. What do I care if you want to try and become rich selling jewelry or fidget spinners or dog sweaters? Have at it, and let the invisible hand determine your fate. I don’t even mind if people have more material possessions than they need, so long as no one has to suffer or lack the necessities of life to make that over-abundance possible. I’ve written before about how moderate levels of wealth inequality are not only natural, but necessary, to a functioning economy.
But I do have a problem when Capitalism becomes the mono-ideology governing every sphere of life for an entire society (planet?). I have a problem when the value of all areas of life is reduced to our utility to make more and more money. I have a problem when people are unable to get the daily bread and medical care necessary for life because of arbitrary market constraints designed to give those who have more than they need even more, while those that don’t have enough suffer and die. One of the terms I use for this phenomena is “Consumerism”. Because that is easier to say than “Neo-Liberalism” or “Totalitarian Hedonism” or "Global Corporate Consumer Capitalism" or “Capitalism taken to reductio ad absurdum”.
Across the broad swath of history, tons of different social systems have been used to horde power and economic resources for the few, leaving the many to languish and starve. And in those societies, the socio-economic system is granted some sort of omnipotent divine status as the summum bonum to value all other things against. Whether that is the court of the Babylonian God-King, or the Roman Emperor, or the Muslim Caliph, or the Absolute Monarch of late medieval Europe, or Stalin and his Politburo, or the Corporate offices of Goldman Sachs. All of these have functioned as siphoning devices that use ideological power to justify the extraction of wealth and resources into the hands of an elite of some kind. All of these have had their cults and ceremonies and institutions and sports and entertainments and other cultural forms which functioned to legitimate the social system and keep it in power.
It’s just that: (a) Consumerism is particularly pernicious, and may be the most effective of these power siphoning systems to ever hit the world stage; and (b) we actually live under Consumerism right now, and not under the others. So it is fairly useless to rant and rail against systems which do not affect us, while pretending that the system which does affect us is just the natural way things are, and cannot change.
So, do I blame everything on Consumerism? Not quite. It might be more fair to say that, at this time and in this pace, everything evil and corrupt in human nature finds a place to express itself in and through Consumerism. Consumerism is the current focusing and siphoning device used by humanity to make explicit everything sick and unhealthy that has always been implicit in the human condition. And as long as Consumerism is the hegemonic ideology that encourages and focuses human sin, I will rail against it. When and if another hegemonic ideology arises, I will be happy to critique it just as harshly. But I have a feeling we will be battling this current Beast for a long time yet.
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