East Meets West: Consumerism & Asceticism
Part 7: 5 things to think about
Before I move to my conclusion, let me quickly summarize some key points.
Consumerism: Not a Matter of Stuff
Consumerism is an anti-type of life as an event of communion. It undercuts communion by telling me that friendship and the other relationships and institutions essential to human flourishing much less communion with God don’t matter; they are at best merely platforms for acquisition.
But even the things I acquire, I discover, have no real value for us except insofar as they allow me to in so vague way assert my separation from you. Basically, consumerism says, “I don’t need you, I’ve got new sneakers.”
Now obviously, someone designed those sneakers and someone else built the factory where they were made. Likewise, someone shipped them to the story and someone else sold them to me. From start to finish, my consumption depends on a whole web of cooperative relationships. As a passion, therefore consumerism undercuts the intrinsic connection of consumption to culture and communion.
Consumption, culture, and communion are intrinsic to each other
Culture isn’t static, isn’t simply the present moment; it extends in two directions simultaneously. It remembers the past and looks to the future.
Culture comes to us from the past as tradition—as the gift given to us by those who have gone before us. And continues after us as the gift we give to future generations.
Consumption is an essential part of this process of receiving, shaping, and transmitting culture. It isn’t simply a private decision. Nor is it a process that lends itself to the ideology of the command and control economy.
Somewhat more provocatively, when seen in the light of the sacraments—and especially the Eucharist—for Christians consumption is an intrinsic part of the process of receiving and transmitting the Gospel.
We are by nature consumers
Consumption is intrinsic to culture and the Gospel because we are—by nature—consumers. If we weren’t, if being a consumer and so consumption we were alien to what it means to be human, then celebrating the Eucharist and receiving Holy Communion would be a sin.
The moral question isn’t how much we consume or even what we consume. It is rather how can we freely transform by grace our consumption into an act of communion.
The moral problem of consumerism is that it leaves my economic life untransformed.
Consumerism & the Passions
The invitation to transform consumption (and so the whole of our economic life) into an act of communion is why I said at the beginning that consumerism isn’t about stuff. It is not, likewise a matter of this or that economic system but how sin has corrupted our relationship to the material world.
This isn’t to suggest a moral equivalence between the free market, on the one hand, and socialism on the other; for all its failings, the former is morally superior to the latter. It is rather to argue that, without prejudice to either divine grace or prudential laws, an effective response to consumerism must be ascetical and sacramental before it is anything else.
Asceticism as a Christian & human discipline
Asceticism in one form or another is common to all Christian traditions. While the specific disciplines might be different, the ascetical impulse and imperative are common to all Christians—East and West, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant.
And while I am no expert, there is also an ascetical dimension to Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. This means the application of our discussion here is really much broader than simply Christians.
Asceticism, in my view, can serve as an ecumenical and even inter-faith meeting point for the study and discussion of the moral and economic problems of consumerism.
Conclusion
So since we are interested in joining good intentions to sound economic theory, what do our reflections on consumption and asceticism contribute to our understanding of the free market?
In The Cost of Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that
If there is no element of asceticism in our lives, if we give free rein to the desires of the flesh (taking care of course to keep within the limits of what seems permissible to the world), we shall find it hard to train for the service of Christ. When the flesh is satisfied it is hard to pray with cheerfulness or to devote oneself to a life of service which calls for much self-renunciation (p. 169).
Simply put no asceticism, no freedom, and so no free market.
If you want to pursue in greater depth what we’ve looked at here very briefly, please consider purchasing my monograph The Cure for Consumerism.
Thank you for your kind attention.