Consumerist lemmings, off the cliff

Those same laptops will probably cost less after Christmas.

Sadly, Rod has a point. Black Friday is becoming almost as big a holiday as Thanksgiving itself.

It was only 4 a.m. at my mall. I guess I should be grateful ... sigh.

I can kind of get how people would enjoy feeling like they are participating in some sort of cultural event, sort of analagous to Superbowl parties, being at the bookstore at 12 midnight to get the next Harry Potter book, etc etc.

Except these aren't people celebrating a sporting event or a book -- they're celebrating consumerism. As far as I can tell.

Good grief, jaybird. One can almost hear, in your words, the echo of the ancient Romans who thought panem et circenses was a really terrific idea for the masses. Who can see that onslaught of a crowd rushing into a concrete emporium after midnight to spend money most of them don't actually have on things they don't even remotely need and not think of Juvenal:

"Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man,the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions - everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things:
bread and circuses..."

Erin:

"One can almost hear, in your words, the echo of the ancient Romans who thought panem et circenses was a really terrific idea for the masses."

eyerolledyface x 1,000,000.

You almost certainly heard wrong. $13 trillion is the entire U.S. Gross Domestic Product for all of 2006.

Erin, Derek, Jaybird -

Actually, a more direct analogy to bread & circuses already exists. It's called Social Security & Medicare. The elderly get benefits, and the politicians get their votes.

On the other hand, I adore the concept of the Shopocalypse. Genius! : )

why must one assume all of those people are morally deficient idiots, spending money most of them don't actually have

Because this is a statistical fact? According to Motley Fool, "Credit card debt carried by the average American: $8,562."

"I've got a serious question here.

Why is it that criticisms leveled at the rampant and destructive consumer culture so often are brushed aside as elitism? Why is observing that there is something seriously wrong, from a cultural perspective, with having throngs of people line up hours before one a.m. to crowd into a shopping mall and start shopping seen as mere snobbery?

Does America even have a culture anymore? Is "everyday low prices" our national motto? Is "shop till you drop" the highest expression of cultural value? Is the act of shopping really the demonstration of defiant patriotism that Bush suggested it was in the days after 9/11?

Do we have any identity that we define aside from our purchases? Do we see everything about our lives as an extension of our consumerism? And if we do, do we believe that to be a good thing?

Posted by: Erin Manning | November 27, 2007 6:54 PM"

To the extent that this shopping these people are doing that you are focusing on is directly displacing other things that these people should be doing instead, you very well may have a point Erin.

What should these people be doing instead with this time and energy displaced by the shopping they are doing, Erin?

Or, if what they're doing is simply bad in its own right, simply because it's being done, that might suffice; tell us why.

Of course, the same complaints, defenses, and questions could be leveled just as easily at people who pray, or fast, or blog a great deal, couldn't they, or could they not?

Rod, this is what drives our economy. Take away the profits from Black Friday (why do you think it is called "Black" anyway) and you have a drop in consumer spending. Less consumer spending = less economic growth.

Such is the nature of a capitalist economy that has moved from a net creditor to a net debtor status.

But hey...we're a Christian nation! Jesus is coming soon and will take this trashy, materialistic world and make it all new and shiny again. We'll be saved, and we won't have to pay for our foolish ways as long as we believe in Jesus, get baptized, and keep an eye on those ungodly homos/lesbos/Islamofacists/libruls/feminazis/Dummycrats/folks who don't go to our church.

So why worry about shopping, Rod. Jesus will sort it out in the end.

/sarcasm

why aren't all christians enviromentalists?
if god made this world,
its preservation would seem to be relevant to
truly praising his goodness.
endless consumerism was not in the bible
your kids and their kids will thank you
for thinking past your self-interest

Did you see the people who were camped out on Thanksgiving afternoon waiting for the sales the next day? They were dining on Thanksgiving dinner picnics brought by sympathetic friends and relatives...

I just found it weirdly ironic that people were spending a holiday which is supposed to celebrate being thankful and content with what you've got by waiting in line to buy cut-rate crap the next day.

why aren't all christians enviromentalists?

Why aren't all Christians saints?

Ignorance, free choice, sin. Take your pick--the same is true of everyone else.

rebecca, your article sounds very interesting. I have a couple of caveats, though. I'm not sure it's all so new. It seems to me that people who could afford it have always wanted fancy stuff. I remember reading Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl when I was a child, and Louisa May Alcott tch-tches just like a modern crunchy con at the rich girls who waste their time and money on fashionable clothes and amusements. Of course, her father was a communard, and she was in favor of women's rights, so I guess she wouldn't count as a good conservative.

When I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, we had very little money, almost no furniture, no car, no TV, and hardly any clothes by the standards of the town we lived in. There were plenty of well-to-do classmates who had walk-in closets and holidays in Bermuda, and who disdained those who couldn't afford the niceties of life. The great Fred Pohl's The Space Merchants, which I referred to in another post, was published in 1954. It's all about the ad agencies taking over America, and Pohl had worked in the industry, so he knew what he was talking about.

If I recall correctly, this was all talked about back then. People wanted public TV, because they feared the effect of constant advertising. Oh, right, but they were liberals. Conservatives--again, IIRC--believed that free enterprise should rule the media and that the airwaves should be sold off to private industry. People did try to critique corporate consumerist culture--but (IIRC) they were denounced as a bunch of un-American hippies and socialists.

I recall Jerry Mander's very interesting 1977 book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and Marie Winn's The Plug-In Drug, about the effects of TV on children. My impression was that conservatives in general didn't take them very seriously and thought that TV problems should be handled by parents controlling viewing time, without trying to control the content that advertisers wanted to put out to children.

My feeling is that people who had the resources have always wanted stuff, and have always tended to judge others based on whether they had stuff or not. What's changed is that we didn't always have an entire industry dedicated to telling them what to want, and we didn't always have an industry whose sole purpose was to encourage people to borrow more money. It's a mixed blessing, to be sure--or a mixed curse--since the existence of credit, wisely used, makes a lot of things possible for working people. But it seems kind of weird to me for conservatives to encourage these developments over the last fifty years, and now heartily blame individuals for being just bad people when they give in and do what they are incessantly encouraged to do. Kind of like blaming people for being fat while pumping their food full of corn syrup and waving Big Macs in their faces 24/7.

Don't want to be the consumerist of the things you disapprove of (trashy TV, plastic doo-dads, commercial American produce, etc.)?

Here's how: don't consume the things you disapprove of.

Want to be the consumerist of the things you do approve of (wholesome books for your kids, that perfect cruciform pendant for her, special organic produce from special producers, etc.)?

Here's how: do consume the things you approve of.

Don't want people to control your legal choices?

Here's how: don't suggest it's acceptable to control anyone's--those would be yours--legal choices.

I just thank the Lord that I don't have to be working in one of those stores at 1am or waiting in line for a sale to be able to afford something. Do those people need what the are buying at 1 in the morning? I don't know. I only know what's in my heart. And I know I don't need most of what I have. Oh to be like St. Francis and cast away all I have to help others. I don't have the guts.

Brad is the perfect example of the libertarian. I did have a pejorative in front of libertarian, but in retrospect I think it was redundant. If it makes you feel better Brad, yes everyone is trying to control everyone's life. Rather than being just another libertarian [pejorative removed due to redundancy], why don't you become a hermit. The rest of us who have to live with each other aren't going to walk on egg shells because you get your panties in a wad over someone turning their nose up at silly behavior. The same folks who always go around saying "government is the only thing that has the right to take your stuff at gun point" are the same folks who can't even handle the mildest of social rebukes. Ugh!

I was looking through an advertisement flier on the Monday following Thanksgiving and thought that I might participate in Black Friday next year. Some of the deals were pretty amazing, and I've never shopped on the Friday following Thanksgiving. After watching this video, I agree with my husband. I'd rather pay more for stuff and not experience the frenzy. The people in the video are having a great time. It's a party. You have to really like crowds and shopping to enjoy that.

Is it sick? That's for each and every person who attends to answer. Some people have problems with shopping. Some people don't feel good about themselves unless they are buying stuff, and they need a continual fix of shopping to feel good. However, most of the people in this video are probably getting a kick out of doing something that's not the usual routine. I don't think it's any stranger than tailgating outside of the stadium before the big game, yelling and screaming during the game, & then going out after the big game to celebrate a victory. It's entertainment. You have to like the game to get it.

As usual, watsy is making the most sense.

I think its high time that Churches embrace "Buy Nothing Day", and perhaps use it as a teaching tool about how consumerism can lay waste to the soul. The "Adbusters-Cruncy Con" convergence is nigh. C'mon Rod, call up those folks in Vancouver and get your word out in the next issue. There is a strong cross-over appeal for anarchist youth looking to fill the void in their lives that a consumerist/suburban upbringing created and exacerbated.

As for this: Why is it that criticisms leveled at the rampant and destructive consumer culture so often are brushed aside as elitism?

Well, possibly because the language and structure of the criticism came across as elitist. Invoking Juvenal against midnight shoppers? C'mon. There's much to say about the destructive aspects of our present culture. But framing it in terms of "Those people are just BAD"--or "those people are just STUPID," or "those people are just LAZY"--is a real conversation-stopper.

That's why I dismiss such comments as elitist. It ain't rocket science. One can't use elitist rhetoric and then feel hurt when the elitism causes irritation among the peons. But of course I would think that. Because I'm just BAD.

I deleted Brad's post attacking Erin. It is absolutely unacceptable to talk about buying feminine hygiene products for someone's children. That is insane. Brad, you are booted from this board permanently. I very nearly did it when I found your IP associated with nasty comments posted under someone else's name. But I couldn't absolutely prove you were responsible for them, and I thought it best to give you another chance to prove your civility. You've failed. Given your personality, you'll probably find a way to sneak back onto this board, and you'll probably manage to do so from time to time under another name. But if I find you, I'll delete you. You are unwelcome here. Take your little act somewhere else.

re: Rev. Billy,
Did anyone else get a nice dose of irony by their first reaction to looking at the film's website being, "I have got to buy this"? :)

M.Z., I guess it depends on what you mean by elitist. Certainly, I agree that some choices are better than others, and I agree that it's not elitist to think so. I agree that arranging your life so you can attend Mass is a good thing, and arranging your life so you can go shopping is less good--though I'm not sure I'd call it "disordered." Don't we all have to go shopping sometimes? And don't we necessarily have to give up some other choice to do that? In theory, going to Mass could be seen as the best possible thing to do, but even people who are highly religious agree that one must work, eat, etc. even if those things are less wonderful in themselves.

What I'm thinking of when I say "elitist" about comments is not the implication that some things are better than others, but rather the idea that some people are better than others. I object to the totalizing nature of statements that assume knowledge of all the motives of all the people who go shopping at midnight, and that assume we know all those motives are bad. Maybe they all have a "materialistic mindset." Maybe they don't. It seems to me that we CAN'T know that, so what is the point of making assertions about it? The only point I can see is to assure the speaker of his/her superiority to such benighted fools. And I can't see what's interesting about that. It accomplishes nothing.

There is a lot to be said about destructive aspects of our culture. I just think there's a lot more to it than saying that everybody, without exception, who would attend a midnight shopping event must be morally disordered. That's unfair, and it doesn't really explain anything--to me. Obviously, it suffices to explain everything to some.

A few years back, my wife and I decided that we would only buy Christmas presents for relatives under 12 years old and that those gifts would be $20 or under.

This is a great idea.

We used to do this but now do something similar: work off a list of items that we are buying anyway and are part of our lifestyle (bikes, fishing poles/tackle, guns/ammo, etc.) and just buy a single one for each Christmas or birthday. We allow relatives to chip in, but otherwise no gifts. This controls the materialistic inflow (which is a big problem with a large family and low sf). The improvement is we only do quality now. If it can't afford quality, we just skip it and go without. Goal: zero junk. Keep, use, and take care of it. The other thing that helps is to always have a big party with lots of food, and overshadow the whole gift thing.

I think today drastic measures are needed. And with the culture splitting (and families often with it) boomer grandparents are often motivated to bypass the family relationship for a personal relationship with the individual kid, and this can express itself through materialism. Creating a gift system prevents this problem neatly.

Sidenote: it's awesome to take back the holidays in other ways, too. We have dumped a lot of American holidays and replaced them with religious holiday feast days where we take the whole day off, no work or school. A holy-day means a lot more when you have, well, a feast that has some depth and purpose behind it. And to avoid the gluttony factor, the religious seasons are all organized to fast a bit first. I would never go back. Before this I used to even sometimes forget a particular feast day completely, but no more as even my youngest kids are looking forward to the day off and the party.

Our family decided to do the name drawing bit amongst the adults. I lobbied either for our all making donations to charity in lieu of gifts at all, or if we were going to exchange gifts, that they be simple things we actually made by hand.

I must make some confessions: I am not one of the people on that video, but were you to put certain moments of my yearly life on the web to bemoan the triviality and crassness of American life, I would probably offer you a sufficient number of targets, given my enjoyment of occasional binges of mindlessness in my reading, my recreation and my activities. I wish I could say I was always pursuing the spiritual, the high-minded, the healthy/good-for-me physical activity, the intellectually stimulating, but sometimes I don't want to cook and those fries taste good, sometimes watching an "I Love Lucy" rerun I've seen many times already is just what I must do.

The particular doesn't disprove the general. Someone may have attended mass because he was offered $20 to do so by a someone. That doesn't change the fact that most people go to mass for religious reasons. The fact that there may have been a 3rd shift worker who was ordinarily up at that time and found it convenient on his day off to shop doesn't change the fact that generally people went to a lot of trouble to be at this mall at this time to fullfill a materialistic desire. The fact that Uncle Ernie decided that it would be an interesting change of pace for him and his boyfriends to go look at golf clubs at 1 in the morning doesn't change the general truth that the crowd was predominantly materialists. You don't have to believe me. The marketing folks at the stores are fairly bright folks.

Alright, here's a great litmus test to whether you have bought into a consumerist/materialist mindset or not:

If you think it can be sign of a loving parent to go to extraordinary measures to obtain something for their child because they want to see the smile of joy on the little one's face when they open the package, you are thinking in a consumerist/materialist way.

Like I said, one of the things which is so problematic about this issue is that it is so ingrained in us as to be almost invisible. Then even when it is pointed out, we have a tendency to think, "so what?" and have a hard time concieving of it being otherwise.
And it most certainly isn't a left/right issue. There is something which is terribly corrupted in the human heart with regards to this issue.

Oh, and I just want to clarify in my little "litmus test" above, I am not saying that a parent wanting to get something for their child to make him/her happy and being willing to go to extraordinary means to do so is always a bad thing. For example, if due to seperation or even severe emotional problems a parent has no other way to demonstrate their care for their child than by buying them something they will value, I certainly wouldn't judge that action. And even under good circumstances a good parent may choose to buy something to make a child happy, but they should be aware that they are acting in a materialist way and not make it a central feature to how they relate with their kids.
OTOH, when a parent knows no no other way of demonstrating love or views buy things for a child as a fundamental way that they show love, that's a good example for a materialist mindset at work.

I think the suggestions people have posted are excellent (including M_David's). They've certainly made me think.

Not to derail what is now an interesting thread, but Brad has often stuck up for me, and I can't let him leave without at least saying goodbye. If you're still reading this, Brad, you'll be missed by at least one person. And I'll be e-mailing Rod. : (

I really need a good definition of "consumerism" to understand the discussion. What is the difference between consuming stuff other people make, since we haven't the skills to produce everything ourselves, and consumerism? What improvements may we make in our lives above the barest necessities without going into "consumerism"?

My other question: if consuming things others make when strictly speaking they aren't absolutely necessary for us or probably anybody is forbidden, how are the people who produce those things going to make a living? Ought everyone to go back to producing only primitive goods to exchange with their neighbors?

Ever so often I have bought an item which I didn't need and didn't even particularly desire just to give a shopkeeper a lift. No big item. Was this consumerism?

For Christmas I bought a cricket cage carved of bone for a grandchild who expressed a desire for such an odd thing. I found one only after apparently he had lost interest in acquiring one or had masked his disappointment in our not being able to find one by denying his interest. Well, he shall have a bit of grandparently indulgence soon; maybe there will be a smile of joy on his face now or maybe with his mother's help it will be only an object by which to remember me after I am gone.
But I do hope that at the very least my exercise in so-called consumerism will have facilitated life for a family in China who without consumers of what they produce would be poorer.

To my mind the bad thing about this ill defined consumerism is the buying of stuff one can't afford and one can't pay for without going into debt. If one can afford an item and pay for it even if it isn't within a St. Francis lifestyle of poverty, why not? Someone still had to weave the cloth however poor it was to cover Francis and Clare and Anthony etc. and they had to earn a living by doing that. Giving other people the opportunity to earn a living should be ranked as a corporal work of mercy too. It is feeding the hungry and clothing the naked every bit as much as passing out the alms. Surely St. Joseph was glad when someone engaged him to build a little improvement in his house in Nazareth and the Foster Son didn't come along with a lecture about consumerism.

Someone still had to weave the cloth however poor it was to cover Francis and Clare and Anthony etc. and they had to earn a living by doing that. Giving other people the opportunity to earn a living should be ranked as a corporal work of mercy too. It is feeding the hungry and clothing the naked every bit as much as passing out the alms. Surely St. Joseph was glad when someone engaged him to build a little improvement in his house in Nazareth and the Foster Son didn't come along with a lecture about consumerism.

So is a X-Box 360 or a LCD TV comparable to clothing? Material goods differ with regards to their necessity. That someone makes a living producing such goods is not in itself enough to justify the production of that good--the popularity and availability of that good (and its use) may indict the society (and economy) that produced it for being unjust or disordered in some way.

"And even under good circumstances a good parent may choose to buy something to make a child happy, but they should be aware that they are acting in a materialist way and not make it a central feature to how they relate with their kids."

See, statements like this are what turn off people who might otherwise be sympathetic to the Crunchy Con mentality. Under the terms of this sentence, not merely nutso Black Friday parents, but all parents who do something as normal and ordinary as buying gifts for their children, are assumed guilty until proven innocent. The universally cherished experience of opening presents on Christmas morning is re-classified as morally suspect, and woe to you if you disagree. Under a mindset this rigorous, how can we justify buying ANYTHING beyond necessities - a copy of Crunchy Cons, an Internet connection, the fancy food and wine Rod likes so much, the expensive wallet about which commenters here had a lengthy debate some time ago, or any manufactured toy of any kind?

"For Christmas I bought a cricket cage carved of bone for a grandchild who expressed a desire for such an odd thing. I found one only after apparently he had lost interest in acquiring one or had masked his disappointment in our not being able to find one by denying his interest. Well, he shall have a bit of grandparently indulgence soon; maybe there will be a smile of joy on his face now or maybe with his mother's help it will be only an object by which to remember me after I am gone."

This seems to me to be an obvious and healthy attitude. I don't advocate spoiling or indulging children, but I don't advocate raising children who never have their endearing little desires fulfilled at any time or in any way. I admire monks and hermits, but it should be a choice voluntarily embraced by adults rather than forced upon children.

P.S. How do the more rigorous commenters here feel about Toys for Tots and other Christmas toy drives? Is this still a morally dubious method of making a child happy in a purely materialistic way, and if so, what alternative events for the poor at Christmas would you suggest?

P.P.S. I guess no one here ever read "The Gift of the Magi." Of course, in that story the attempts of Jim and Della to satisfy each other's purely material desires cancelled each other out because both spouses were extremely unselfish, but suppose that only the husband (or only the wife) had gone to great lengths to buy the other spouse a nice present - would that have been a loving act, or would it have been a false and materialistic love?

Caroline and James, do you think perhaps there might be a difference between acknowledging that one must be a consumer, and raising consumerism to a value independent of necessity?

Bear with me--I'm trying to hash this out. But it seems to me that recognizing that even the Holy Family at Nazareth might have had to purchase some of the items they needed, being unable to make everything themselves, is rather different from accepting as the unchanging and unchangeable reality of one's life a culture that celebrates shopping, encourages people to shop constantly for the support of the economy and even the accomplishment of one's patriotic duty, and elevates shopping to the status of a near-religion.

The loving parent buying a doll or a set of blocks at Christmas isn't, to me, participating or accepting this cult of the shopper at the same level and with the same consequences as the family like one I saw featured in a series of articles or programs, that was literally smothered in consumer debt, and yet could not restrain themselves from spending several hundred dollars a day on extraneous articles of clothing, media items like cds and dvds, craft supplies for the mother to add to the room in her house that held thousands of dollars worth of yarn, fabric, and patterns, restaurant food, and the like.

Perhaps the difference really is only one of degree and priorities--but isn't that the same with any social illness? The difference between the alcoholic and the person who drinks occasionally and responsibly is a matter of the degree to which alcohol is consumed, and the priority alcohol has in each person's daily life. So you could call them both "drinkers" just as you call everyone living in America today a "consumer"--but is there really NO difference between the two?

Similarly, the glutton is the person who centers his whole life around food, and either consumes far too much of it, or is far too nice in his dietary requirements for no reason other than his own pleasure. Well, we all eat, and we all eat irresponsibly on occasion, so does that mean that there's not really any such thing as gluttony, or if there is, it must be a good thing?

What I'm getting at is this: is there a difference between being a consumer and being a consumerist, or between living in a culture whose people both produce and consume according to somewhat necessary levels, and living in a culture that finds its highest and best expressions of cultural value in unlimited consumerism that is so far divorced from ideas of necessity that it no longer understands the term?

Brad's comments: Brad is something of a provocateur (as well as a parodist of the graduate-school vocabulary), and his deleted comments were inappropriate and calculated to offend, but I too will miss many of his contributions. I happen to agree with the points he was making on this thread (also made by others). I don't normally comment on threads like this one because I think the topics may tend toward the extreme and caricature (people obsessed with midnight sales, people wallowing in subprime debt, indulging in huge exurban homes, etc.). Thanks for the chance to express my opinion.

I had a friend, an old, poor black man who worked with Toughlove and other programs for messed-up youth. He used to say "You cannot give what you have not got." I quote him often, and probably will again. If others are materialists, why is that? Could it be because that's all they see about how to be happy? If I think I have something better, something that makes me happier--and I do--then I have to share it with them, or they'll never know what it is. How can I condemn frantic shoppers for not having peace and love in their hearts if I haven't given them any of mine? That's like condemning the starving for eating out a garbage pail, while I view them comfortably through the window of my house where I'm having dinner.

People don't know what it's like to celebrate with love instead of stuff unless someone shows them. Invite them to come in. Invite them to help trim your Christmas tree and give them homemeade eggnog. Invite them over for carols and cocoa. Trivial Pursuit and a nice Cabernet is okay too. Shovel their walk while they're away at the mall. Jesus said to go out to the highways and byways and ask everybody in. He'd probably go to the mall too.

I heard a preacher talking once, about how to get a bone away from a dog. "You don't try to take his bone," he said. "He'll just growl and snarl and hold tighter to that bone than ever. But wave a juicy pork chop in front of his face. See how fast he drops that bone." You want people to let go of their stuff? Show them something better. Show them something they can really hold on to. If you don't have anything to give them, well . . . why blame them for going shopping to see if they can find what they need?

And when I say "show them" I mean just that. I don't mean show them by starting a journal they'll never read, or sermonizing about them behind their backs. I mean show them a human face of kindness and friendship. It's the only way, people. It seems as if it would be easier and faster to just tell them off en masse. When I hang around these boards long enough, I too get sucked into this delusion. But it does not work. Love changes hearts, and nothing else does.

I meant that as a statement of appreciation, btw, not as a statement to go take this writing elsewhere .... just in case there was the teensiest possibility of being misunderstood.

I sincerely appreciate the Christ-like approach you take, as exemplified above.

Thanks, Jim. I sure wish it were as easy to be Christ-like in deed as it is in words! : ) Reflecting on this thread has been a good wake-up call for me. We used to practice hospitality a lot more than we have since our last move to the East Coast, where people do seem to feel pretty self-sufficient. I think I need to challenge myself to stir my stumps and look harder for those opportunities to reach out, instead of waiting for them to come to me. Some of my happy memories of Christmas involve how my parents would always include other people--stray graduate students, neighbors without families, etc. They were a good example in that way.