Atonement and Consumption: Part 2 (Solution: Consumerism?)

Rodney Clapp wrote a sobering article addressing the triumph of consumerism and how it has become “so all-consuming” of the life and society of the West, even of the Church. For Clapp there is a careful distinction to make between “consuming to live” (linked with ‘consecrated consumption’) and “living to consume” (what is meant by ‘consumerism’ or ‘consumer capitalism’).[i] The most obvious feature of consumerism is the advertising industry. In 1996, it was said that Americans are exposed to some 3500 advertisements per day, which come in the media of television, radio, billboards, magazines, newspapers, etc. Imagine how that number has increased with advertisements on the side of your facebook page or as you are surfing the internet.

The ancestry of ‘consumerism’ or ‘consumer capitalism’ can be traced back to the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. These ideals and movements can be seen as results of the rise of Protestantism. This is not to say that the Protestant Reformers are to blame for the current consumeristic culture; only that the ethic arising out of their emphases made room for the development of theologies of production and consumption, which (as everything else) can be (and in this case, has been) abused. The result of the rise of Protestantism’s ethic is that their successors (e.g., Charles Finney, Asa Candler, John Wanamaker, etc.) so emphasized freedom that they “sanctified choice,” and this is “a key component of today’s consumer capitalism.”[ii]

With production growing at exponential rates, there was not enough demand to meet the supply. How do we remedy this situation? “Pump up consumption, to increase demand…and not simply cater to pre-existing needs, but create new needs.”[iii] This drive to “create new needs” moved from material and showing how particular products fulfill logistical or physical needs to suggesting an ‘atmosphere’ of being able to be profoundly and emotionally satisfied merely by acquiring the product being advertised. Thus, categories of “speed, style, beauty, sex, love, [and] spirituality” are evoked in the modern consumer merely by having the ability to select a “vast array of products, services, and commodified experiences.”[iv] It is within this context that consumerism grew to where consumers, being told in every advertisement their needs are not fulfilled, are continually dissatisfied. Humanity has been dissatisfied since the fall, but unique to consumerism is that insatiability is encouraged to the point of what Clapp terms the “deification of dissatisfaction.”[v]

So why all the fuss about consumerism and what does it have to do with the problem we talked about in the previous thread of defining or identifying the self? With consumerism reigning in today’s society, it is apparent that its permeation is aimed at fulfilling and solving the dilemma of seeking to identify the self. That is, “to know yourself, feed yourself.” One’s identity is found in consuming sexually, materially, selfishly, even spiritually or religiously, so long as the consumer is willing to live with the consequences of his/her consumption. In effect, the consumption is done regardless of its effect on ‘the other’ (neighbor, God, creation). Perhaps the adjectives most sharply associated with this type of person would be “nomadic” and “homeless.”[vi] The person caught up in consumerism is perpetually moving on to the next thing, the next job, the next product, the next relationship, the next church instead of committing long-term. The person is so permanently detached that the only thing that one can attach to is to not being bound (attached) by or to anything or anyone except oneself. Therefore, the net result is the blending of consumerism and individualism.

Up to this point, I have largely avoided the use of ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ language. The reason is because less radical postmoderns see consumerism as both a modern and postmodern characteristic.[vii] The survival of rampant consumerism may be the one facet of modernism that will significantly prolong if not prevent postmodernity from fully arriving. In regard to the furtherance of consumer capitalism (and probably individualism, too), our world could be said at least in some respects to be in “hyper modernity.”

In the next thread, I'll talk about how we can critique consumerism and begin laying ground for a Christian response to the problem of lost identity.

...to be continued...

References:
[i] Rodney Clapp, “Why the Devil Takes Visa,” Christianity Today, (Oct. 7, 1996), 19.
[ii] Ibid., 23.
[iii] Ibid., 24-25, italics mine.
[iv] Ibid., 26.
[v] Ibid., 26.
[vi] J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh, Truth is Stranger than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age, (Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity, 1997), 58.
[vii] George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society, (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 2000), 184.