East Meets West: Consumerism & Asceticism

Part 3: An Anthropology of consumption

For Orthodox soteriology (theology of salvation), the problem of sin is only secondarily a matter of doing bad things. Yes, I do bad things but I do them in the service of holding myself apart from God and neighbor. In effect, to be a sinner is to lock myself up in my own subjectivity. The fact this is impossible doesn’t enter into my thinking; I strive to remain separate from others both divine and human.

The various demoniacs in the New Testament as well as though who suffer physical disabilities or an illness of one kind or another are all illustrations—types in the technical phrase of the fathers—of what it means to be a sinner. In each case, the person suffers something that cuts him or her off not just from the daily life of society but a life of human flourishing.

Maybe he can’t work, or she can’t stand up straight. Maybe he lives naked in a cemetery bound by chains. Or maybe the person is simply dead. In all these cases, the person is denied the normal human interactions that we take for granted.

Notice in all of these examples, that the person hasn’t chosen his or her situation:

…His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.”

But providentially, their afflictions are transformed by grace into a revelation of communion: “that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:2-4, NKJV).

As a sin, consumerism—whether chosen or imposed—the material world becomes the cause of the person’s estrangement from the world of persons, events, and things. Rather than consumption and economic decisions being an event of communion,¹ they become instead the cause of division, dissonance, and even antagonism.

Let’s see how this happens.

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Consumption is productive

One of the key assumptions I’m making here is that contrary to what the word literally means, consumption is fundamentally productive; it isn’t destructive but creative. It is about the health and growth of the physical body, the family, and society; it is about the production of meaning. It is through consumption that we create, maintain, and strengthen our social ties and our personal identity.

This is why, as the cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas writes, “Terms such as ‘conspicuous consumption’ [connote] an aura of disapproval over keeping up with the Joneses.” When we put aside our moralism we realize on closer analysis, that what the term reveals is that the speaker sides with the cultural elite over and against “against those who are trying not to be excluded.”²

In other words, conversations and debates about consumption reflect disagreements about who we are and who want to be, personally or as a people. Above all, discussions of consumerism are about who’s in and who’s out and about who gets to set the standard for society and, more importantly, who doesn’t.

This also means that consumption is concerned with the kind of community we create and, ultimately, about the communion between Christ and the People of God.

Stuff, not friendships or institutions

Douglas is again helpful here when she argues that “Consumption is the very arena in which culture is fought over and licked into shape.” This means that to address effectively and wisely the challenge of consumerism “moral indignation is not enough.”³

Consumption or consuming is essential to the work of culture, that is to friendship, religion, as well as marriage and family life (to name only a few). Consumerism undercuts all this by telling me that what matters is not friendship and the other relationships and institutions essential to human flourishing and which are meant to guide my consumption.

Unlike consumption, consumerism is negative.; it’s not primarily about production but destruction. And what’s destroyed is social meaning, friendships, and the institutions that foster human flourishing.

When in the grip of consumerism, I abandon my responsibility to foster virtue in self and others through my economic decisions. Even when others support me in my consumerism, we are not united by the virtue of friendship but merely by the same harsh utilitarianism that joins thieves; guided by consumerism we are a gang. Why? Because consumerism infects relationships with envy, with the desire to take what others have not so I can have it but so that they don’t.

The role of culture in our consumption

Remember as well that our economic decisions don’t simply shape culture for good or ill; our culture also shapes our economic decisions and so our consumption. The moral and social problem of consumerism is that consumption—a biological and social necessity—is guided by envy. This is why consumerism undermines not only economic liberty but civic life rooted in a just and free social order.

But look at how a culture—specifically, the Christian tradition— rooted not in envy but gratitude transforms consumption. For the Christian, a biological necessity (eating) becomes not just an event of true community but of communion with God and neighbor in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

And what do we do when, as Christians, we celebrate this communion and our life in the community of faith? 

We don’t just receive and consume the Lord’s Body and Blood. Yes, we do this but we also build churches, monasteries, and schools; we compose music, engage in philosophy & theology; and to this, we add our care for the poor and the sick, and any number of other activities. Consumption purified of envy, of the desire to remain apart from each other, and rooted instead in gratitude is wildly, unimaginably productive materially and culturally, morally and spiritually.

The Christian response to consumerism should not adopt the nagging tone of the moralist but the poetry of liturgy. It is the Church’s sacramental worship that allows us to engage in economic activities that take as normative “the ends of human life, specifically the end of life in God.”  It is the ascetical life rooted in the sacraments, and above all the Eucharist, that makes it possible for us to understand economic issues in a way that does not “defer a discussion of the ends [purposes] of human life”⁴ but puts them at the center of the conversation.

1. For more on this see John D. Mueller (2014) Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element.

2. Mary Douglas, The World of Goods, p. 91.

3. Douglas, p. 37.

4. Cavanuagh, Being Consumed, p. viii.