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 Consumerism  (the new  religion) 

We live in a consumers society. This society consumes. This society is destroying too.
Today values are:  competition, success, fame and the dollar.
We may say the "religion" of the dollar.

The hallowed dollar is a cheap substitute for cultural values lost to greed and ambivalence (2)

The language of consumerism is the language of hunger.  "Appetite" for products must be 
created. Corporations need to invent, manufacture and sell products, and we need to buy and
consume,so that corporations may invent and sell new products, which in turn we have to buy

Such "system" is destroying not only environment, but "man" and his values, traditions, culture.
Man is becoming more and more a merchandise, targeted by research firms, trying to seize
every bit of data influencing purchases.

And by marketing firms calling people at home, impudently offering products and services.
Latest fashion:  a computer rings you up with a recorded sales message.
So, "they" consider us androids (?)  are we already ?  (see also  Man-values )

We are alarmingly driven by corporations & media to recognize ourselves as inadequate, as 
not "in tune" with society, and to believe that buying some new "gadget" or "gizmo" will
indeed make us happy and feel we are "ok"...

So, the "system" actually induces a sense of inadequacy, insatisfaction and frustration,
deliberately and cynically in order to merely achieve "growth": production growth, GNP
growth, sales growth, advertising growth, profit growth...

We are kind of "entrapped" in a giant truck speeding up in a downhill road,
and yet no one finds time or a chance to even think about just slowing down ...

The Media is spreading the new Word everywhere, brainwashing children and kids with

the NEW COMMANDMENTS, which are really simple:

1. you shall have no other DOLLAR,  besides...

2. you shall honour the Market and the Media, spreading the new Word and Gospel anywhere

3. thou shalt compete with thy neighbour, and with anybody 

4. you shalt not emulate your pairs, but the most successful people in the universe

5. you shall try and possess the best cars, suits, and status symbols and so on

6. you shall give your children "griffe" clothes, or anything "signed", the latest
    mobile phone, and any "ESSENTIAL-article-to-be-invented-soon"

7. you shall work to obtain "things": once obtained, you shall work more for "new" things

8. you shalt not escape the "Rules" by sheltering in drugs: this is a deadly, unacceptable sin

No wonder that no one finds time to even think: often the problem is simply arriving at the
end of the month, with all the work to be done, and the innumerable things to procure. 

How fortunate for us that we are a very intelligent species (and that we DO know it),
otherwise all this would seem crazy, wouldn't it...   
 

quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, April, 1967 :

"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A nation can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy."

extract from "Shop till you...stop!" by Shawna Richer, 2/23/2002, quoting prof. Jhally  (1):

The 46-year-old communications professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, founder of the groundbreaking Media Education Foundation, argues that our survival as a species is dependent on minimizing the threat from advertising and the commercial culture that spawns it

"Advertising is like a drug dealer It's always there offering us a hit, cajoling us to take a whiff. And the extent to which we do stops us from thinking of real ways we can become happy."

"Advertising uses the images of a deeply desired social life that the market can't provide and link those to the things a market can provide.

from "Consumerism and the new capitalism" by R.Cronk, 1996  (2) :

The hallowed dollar is a cheap substitute for cultural values lost to greed and ambivalence in post-modern America

Mass media perpetuates the myth of consumerism as a priority of the New Capitalism

In corporate (monopolistic) capitalism the consumer is a target -- he is acted upon. Controlling interests commodify culture and sell it to a public weaned on media advertising

Self-awareness and self-worth have been distorted. We are what we wear. In the New Capitalism's seduction of the television audience, the individuating personality identifies with advertising fantasies and consumer ideals. Who we are merges with roles and images portrayed in the media.

Extensive exposure to duplicity in media advertising has weakened the grasp of consciousness on subjective knowledge of being (or any meaningful sense of truth).

from "New consumerism", by Juliet B. Schor  (3) :

My term is "competitive consumption," the idea that spending is in large part driven by a comparative or competitive process in which individuals try to keep up with the norms of the social group with which they identify-a "reference group."

What's new is the redefinition of reference groups: today's comparisons are less likely to take place between or among households of similar means

The New Consumerism represents a shift toward a vertical emulation process in which people are increasingly defining their consumer aspirations by looking to the lifestyles and consumption patterns of the top 20 percent of the income distribution - roughly speaking, those earning about $100,000 in US dollars a year or more

One reason for this shift to "upscale emulation" is the decline of the neighborhood as a focus of comparison.

from "Commercialism" by Lawrence Kelemen (4):

Doug Herzog, while serving as president of Fox Entertainment, thus justified the level of alcohol, sex, and violence on his network, saying, "This is all happening because society is evolving and changing, but the bottom line is people seem to be buying it."

As Dr. Neil Postman, chairman of the Department of Communications Arts at New York University, points out, "What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer."

 www.commondreams,org/views02/0223-01.htm         (Toronto Globe & mail 2/23/02)  (1)

www.westland.net/venice/art/cronk/consumer.htm              (R.Cronk, 1996)            (2)

www.assaultedthoughts.com/consumption/schor/1.htm     (upscale emulation, Juliet Schor)   (3)

www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Commercialism.htm   (Lawrence Kelemen in Judaism online)  (4)

 www.anped.org           unit.aist.qo.jp/lca-center    (beyond consumer soc.)

www.apa.org/monitor/jun04   (consumerism discontents )

www.resurgence.org/resurgence/articles/griffiths.htm  (consumerism consumes)

www.sustainableenterprises.com/Planet/anticonsumer.htm  (SAVE planet &values/traditions )

www.thismagazine.ca/issues/2002/11/rebelsell.php  (we hate but ...we shop)

 www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0109-04.htm  (news progressive community)

www.earthsummit2002.org/toolkits/Women/ngo-doku/ngo-conf/ngoearth21.htm (nongovern.organizations women)

www.westland.net/venice/art/cronk/tv.htm  (television )

www.verdant.net/rad.htm  (reduction of consumerism)

www.enough.org.uk/enough08.htm  (anti consumerism league) 

www.forthefuture.org/proj_consumerism.htm    (group to revision way of life)

http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/ncl.htm  (new culture, addiction, "need")

www.vnn.org/editorials/ET9912/ET12-5065.html  (editorial Indian philosophy Vaishnava)