SUCKED IN (talk from www.gatheringcafe.com)

Consumerism is a deceiving ism to deal with these days. Not many of us would rank it as serious a problem as AIDS, War, Breast Cancer, or something else. However, there’s something going wrong in a culture that has become consumed with consumption.

Just to be clear. I’m not a radical on this topic, but I’ve been thinking a little more seriously about it in recent months.

What is consumerism? A term used to describe the effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions and consumption.

Here’s 4 Myths (notes version) we exposed about consumerism that made us think a little more seriously about it:

1. I am what I buy, eat, build
(ya, we know innately this is not true, but it sure seems like this with all the consuming we do)

2. There’s a solution I can BUY for any problem I have.
Go to any magazine vendor and count the # of ads versus the # of pages in a magazine. E.G. Rolling Stones (82 pages vs. 44 pages of ads); Vanity Fair (THICK mag, but 1st 60 pages we’re pure ads); Oprah (1 full page ad for every 2-3 pages, plus 2-3 page ads + small ads all over the place).
QUESTION: can you list more 5-6 activities that don’t cost you anything?

3. Purchasing things (Big Mac’s, Latte’s, stuff) I don’t need DON’T affect my perception about my happiness.
Collectively, Canadian consumers now owe $752.1 billion,… up 36 per cent in the past 10 years when adjusted for inflation. Over the same period, personal disposable income, or take-home pay, has risen 15 per cent. In other words, Canadians are piling on debt more than twice as fast as their income is growing. (Macleans, Dec/04)

4. Consumerism isn’t a problem affecting our culture.
Interesting that more people complained about Janet Jackson’s bra falling off at the Super Bowl 2 years ago, and very few, if any, had anything to say about the commercials advertising Erectile Deficiencies (try explaining that to your 8 year old)
What about the 19,000 hours of TV people watch from 0-19 years old?
What about the gadgets we keep upgrading? Do you think the ads we watch on TV, the constant upgrading of our products have an effect on the marriages and families people choose to walk away from when we want a new version.
“Why be you, when you can be new” (from Robots, the movie)

Please be clear about something before you go and sell your house and only shop at used clothing stores (HA): We are all consumers; therefore, we must consume to live. However, consumerism is when you live to consume. This distorts your view of true life and happiness.

Here’s a quote about how consumerism affects you, your faith, and the way you value yourself:
"The consuming self, unmasked, reveals a terrible absence. There is no substance to our being, nothing there but the appearances, the ‘outside’, the ‘looking good,’ which has become, as the ad says, ‘everything.’ There is a hole underneath it al. It is a discovery frighteningly made in those moments of true solitude when we are no loner producing, consuming, marketing, or buying. The demise of the self takes place long before any death suffered by one’s own hand. It occurs when first the myth that we are nothing but ‘what we eat, what we build, and what we buy’ is lodged in our mind."
(Following Christ in a Consumer Society: The Spirituality of Cultural Resistance
by John F. Kavanaugh, page 6)

COMMENT: what ways can you combat the effects of consumerism in your life?