For me, one of the hardest things about being a Pagan is living in a society where nothing has value in itself.  Our world is believed to be made up of things – people occasionally exempted unless they are in the way of a corporation.   Some thing is valuable to the degree it can be transformed into something different from what it is or assists us as a tool.  A tree is valuable as lumber, or maybe for the pleasure it gives someone who looks at it.  The same is true for everything else.  For ideologues left and right it holds for people as well, unless, for the right, they are a fetus.  

Nothing separates me as a Pagan farther from the mainstream of this culture than its overwhelming disrespect for everything that does not serve the narrow ego.

When I returned to Sebastopol after living away for a time, I immediately noticed the strong emphasis in store windows across town to ‘buy local.’  Buy local even if the prices might be a bit higher and the choices a bit narrower.  Some people might be cynical at the motives of these shopkeepers.  In some cases their cynicism might be warranted.  But that even a narrowly self-interested owner would make this call is a sign some Americans are beginning to think of themselves as more than consumers.  Maybe even as citizens.

Our country is deeply sickened by the apotheosis of the consumer as some kind of ideal.  But like the emperor’s new clothes, once questioned, its persuasiveness disappears.  Who on earth hopes for their children to grow up into satisfied consumers?  No decent parent.  It is a sign of the degeneracy of the American right wing that after 9-11, George Bush urged everyone to – go shopping.

Mammon, our real national deity, responds that when resources are scarce, we should buy what is cheapest, leaving as much as possible left over for other things.  Resources are always scarce.  We are surrounded by scarcity. We need to be “efficient,” and we should reward the “efficient” who give us what we want for the least price.

Superficially this is a strong argument.  I once believed it myself.  But in fact it is a deeply destructive argument, spiritually and economically.  From a small truth it weaves a complex falsehood.  I’ll start with the economics, where we find the small truth.

Markets enable us to exchange things with each other, at the time each of us preferring the new situation over what we imagine would be the case if our exchange had not been made.  It is win-win.  When we spend less for something, we have more to spend on something else.  This argument is not nothing, but it does not mean nearly as much as it sounds like it does.

The logic of exchange works best when all costs and benefits are experienced by those involved.  Ideally we know the costs we are paying for the benefits we expect.  Also ideally, the price we pay reflects the total costs we will pay for our new possession.

Let’s see how this plays out when deciding to buy online or locally.  I can get something for one price locally, or somewhat less online.  What to do?  To choose wisely and well we need to see farther than our consumer ideal.

We live in places.  These places are networks of human relationships (as well as with the other-than-human, but I am setting that aside for now).  A city or town is a kind of social ecology, a network of complicated human relations, only some of which are reflected in dollars and cents.  A neighborhood street does far more than assist transportation.  Life on the street decreases or increases the rate of crime, the relationships residents have with one another, and the nature of growing up.  A vital community has many storefronts and lots of sidewalk traffic.  A dismal or dying one does not.  

Locally owned businesses make for a more vibrant local economy, give more back in local donations and taxes than chain stores, and on balance help provide more and better jobs to the people who live there.  None of these advantages are reflected in the price of what the stores sell.

When I look at something as a consumer, I compare its price at a local store with its price on Amazon, or somewhere else.  But when I buy from the local store I am helping maintain my community’s social ecosystem.  When I buy from Amazon, I am not.  As residents and citizens of our towns and cities, we all benefit from these networks of relationships, most largely invisible to us.  If I act only as a consumer, I will always under estimate the benefits from buying locally. The logic of farmers’ markets largely applies to buying other things locally.

What’s that got to do with spirituality, or Paganism?  Quite a lot, I think.

Spiritually, buying from this larger perspective recognizes we are anything but isolated egos seeking to serve our ‘preferences.’ As wise people have known for millennia, and as science is demonstrating on even very subtle levels of our lives, we are who we are because of our relations.  For example, the New Scientist reports on research showing our behavior is powerfully influenced not only by our friends, but also even by their friends whom we do not know.  We are more likely to be depressed if the friends of our friends are depressed!  Even if we do not know them.  Our world is subtle.

A town in economic collapse, filled with depressed citizens, will tend to make citizens in it who are not depressed, depressed.  A prosperous community will work the other way.

I am reminded of the Lakota blessing and reminder I was taught to say when entering a sweat lodge, “mitakuye oyasin” meaning “All My Relations.” 

Pagan spirituality seeks harmony with all our relations, whether it be through the sweat lodge, or in seeking to bring ourselves into balance with the Wheel of the Year.  This is the opposite of narrow consumerism.

To choose solely as a consumer is to consider something a means to some end other than it itself and ultimately relevant only to me.  Things are valuable so far and so long as they serve us.  Interpersonally, their only worth is in money terms.

Left unasked is whether everything is in fact a means to my ends?  Answering ‘yes’ is the logic that directly undermines anyone who believes value is inherent in the world. “Consumerism” is an acid that eats away the sacredness of our world.