East Meets West: Consumerism and Asceticism

Part 2: Consumerism & Economic Systems

Often as a priest, I find it helpful to think less in moral or theological terms and more like the social scientist that I am. In other words, I tend to ask “what is” before asking “what ought to be.” And, like the good son of the Enlightenment that I am, I know I can’t simply jump from what is to what ought to be.

So let’s slow down our thinking about consumerism and see what we can see. Let’s ask, “what is” before we ask “what ought to be.”

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Not systems but choices

It’s easy to look at the excesses of the free market and think,

Ah! That’s the problem! It’s our capitalistic culture that makes us so consumeristic! If we can get rid of capitalism or the free market or (someone else’s) private property, we’ll get rid of consumerism!

Well, no.

Let’s listen to St. Neilos the Ascetic, the 5th century disciple of S.t John Chrysostom. He complains that the Christians of his time “no longer pursue plainness and simplicity of life.” He goes on to say that they “no longer value stillness, which helps to free us from past defilement, but prefer a whole host of things which distract us uselessly from our true goal.”

And what are these distractions?

We … select the crafts which give the highest return, even though they absorb all our attention and leave no time for the remembrance of God.

Neilos goes on to charge the Christians of his time of what—today—we call practical atheism:¹

…we accused God of being incapable of providing for us, or ourselves of being unable to fulfill the commitments of our calling. Even if we do not admit this openly, our actions condemn us; for we show approval of the ways of worldly men by engaging in the same pursuits, and perhaps working at them even harder than they do.

Take the long, historical view and you realize pretty quickly that consumerism isn’t unique either to our era or, much less, the free market. It is something that, in a fallen world, we have always had to struggle against.

“Mass consumption” and the social safety net

This doesn’t mean that consumerism can’t be more clearly seen in one economic system rather than another; it can. But as St. Neilos makes clear, when we do see consumerism it’s likely because we disagree with other people’s economic decisions, especially those that affect us.

In an American context, this means we are likely to be sensitive to the failures of the free market. While I don’t want to suggest that there aren’t moral failures to be found in capitalism, consumerism isn’t unique to this economic system any more than it is to any other. And when we live in a mixed economic system as we do in the United States, we can easily overlook the different ways in which even good intentions can cause consumerism.

The historian Frank Trentmann, for example, makes this observation:

Without the coupled rise of welfare services and social equality, ‘mass consumption’ would have been less massive. To exclude the contribution of social services and transfers in accounts of consumption simply because they are not bought in a market is a mistake.

He concludes by saying that increasing “levels of consumption cannot just be put at the feet of neo-liberals and blamed on the rich setting off a cascade of excess, shopping binges and debt that trickles down to the rest of society.” ²

Spending down a bank account

Just by way of illustration if you know anyone living on Social Security you know that there are strict income limits placed on recipients. Especially when someone lives in say a nursing home where their day-to-day needs are met by the institution they often find themselves with excess savings. So to stay within the income limits, they (or more likely a family member), need to “spend down” their savings to keep them from losing their financial assistance.

Basically, we force people to buy things they don’t really want in order to keep the aid they really need.

Think about it.

An elderly pensioner might inadvertently contribute to the problem of consumerism by buying clothes or other consumer goods not out of personal interest in owning more stuff but to maintain his or her position in society as destitute and so worthy of financial assistance. 

To put it differently, the poor are sometimes forced to consume because we’ve created a situation in which they can’t afford to not be poor.

As we’ll see in a moment the things we purchase, and the goods we consume, are not ends in themselves. Rather, they serve to create, reveal, and affirm our place in society.

1. See for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_atheism.

2. Frank Trentmann (2016), Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First. Harper. 13.