The addiction of Consumerism

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0804/S00184.htm
The above linked article has me thinking about Consumerism as a form of addiction in our society. In our society we are told to consume; food, drink, drugs... to spend; our money that we've earned, money that we've yet to earn with credit cards... to acquire; material things like cars, clothing, homes, electronics and others on a list of endless wishes upon which new things are added by the dozen every season, always better than the previous model they are replacing. The need to consume is an addiction that is socially okay, in fact it consists as the bedrock of our economy.

I decided to blog on this because it is an important issue for me. As I have begun my own spiritual journey, I realize how lonely the path that I walk is. Although I find that during my discussions with others many people inherently understand where I am coming from, I have yet to find less than the number I could count with one hand who seriously persue it. By "it" I mean the embracing of the core of our being, our spirit. By it I mean the understanding that the mind and body are connected inseperably. I have yet to find many who remain consciously aware of the effect of the consumer context on our society. It is just so invisible to so many people that they never really question it, or ponder it. At this point in my life I am seeking to offer up alternatives, and manifest a freedom from it in my own way of being. I find a lot who are half way there... they understand that friends and family are a key component of happiness, yet their interactions with those groups are limited to the context of consumerism... clubs, sporting events, movies, shared interest in television programs. Very rarely are the bonds formed based on spirituality or service to the community.

Like many of my blogs, this is going to seem like a disjointed rant because well, that's what it is. This is how my mind works. It picks up in the middle and leaves off somewhere short of the end. I'm always becoming aware of these cyclical trends that are constantly recycling themselves through life.

The article states that, "Most professionals will agree that the purpose or function of an addiction is to put a buffer between ourselves and the experience or awareness of our emotions. An addiction serves to numb us so that we are out of touch with what we know and what we feel."

I can't help but think that we numb ourselves to the reality of the unsustainability of our culture. We know that as a society we can't continue to consume more than our fair share of resources. As conscience human beings we just can't face the fact that a good portion of the world is starving to death while we live in excess. So rather than deal with it, we exhalt our lifestyle... we hold it up as the pinnacle of human success. As our souls wither away, as we enslave ourselves to the system through debt, we none the less keep the television on with its images of life at the extremes. We watch it continually morphing, the same old cycle of what was cool last year being pushed out of the way by what is cool now. That what is cool now was cool thirty years ago and is simply being recycled never really enters into our minds. That what is cool now is simply the continuation of spending as much as possible on whatever is new, while always going to the new spots, having the new things, meeting new people and coming up with new ideas never gets old. The underlying mechanism stays the same, the content just changes... iPods become iPhones, minivans become SUVs, vodka martinis become mojitos while the discos become house clubs and whiney Emo bands replace angst ridden punks on the radio.

Because consumerism has become the context in which we live our lives, it has become invisible. We don't mind the chains that we put ourselves in because we are conditioned to believe that we really want them. Even so far back as elementry school I can remember lunch boxes, Trapper Keepers and backpacks, each with their own associated status depending on the cartoon, design or maker of the product. We become conditioned to focus less on what the actual object is, but specifically what KIND of object it is. It isn't enough to have a television, it needs to a high definition, 1080p TV with the associated entertainment center. It can't just be a computer, it needs to be an Apple Macintosh. You can't just have a cellphone that dials numbers, it needs to be an MP3 playing iPhone with integrated touch screen. The objects themselves become the material for conversation. The ability to acquire the objects becomes a built in definer of class, of social status and position in the hierarchy.