...observations and ramblings from a learner and traveler...

16 May 2012

The Religion of Consumerism


If you care to consider this, kindly read the whole thing and think about it before commenting.  The context is the question of what do we see as the Kingdom of God which we are to desire upon this earth and, particularly, how does our consumerist model match up.  The entire section in the book is worth considering.

   In particular, they don't want us to ask, "Where does all this stuff come from?" Instead, they encourage us to accept a certain magic, the myth that the garments and equipment that circulate from the mall through our homes and into the landfill simply emerged in shops as if dropped by aliens. The processes of production and transport remain hidden and invisible, like the entrances and exits for the characters at Disney World. This invisibility is not accidental; it is necessary in order for us not to see that this way of life is unsustainable and selfishly lives off of the backs of the majority of the world. What the liturgy of the mall trains us to desire as the good life and "the American way" requires such massive consumption of natural resources and cheap (exploitive) labor that there is no possible way for this way of life to be universalized. (Though the United States comprises only 5 percent of the world's population, we consume somewhere between 23 and 26 percent of the world's energy.) The liturgy of consumption births in us a desire for a way of life that is destructive of creation itself; moreover, it births in us a desire for a way of life that we can't feasibly extend to others, creating a system of privilege and exploitation.

- James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, pg 101. (emphasis mine)

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