Confessions of a Consumer Addict

admin January 17th, 2012

I am actually embarrassed to admit this, but one of the things I learned during our recent move and settling-in, is how dependent I/we are on the consumer establishment for my sense of security and well-being.

Ugh! That’s disgusting! But true.

After two or three weeks of unpacking and getting to know our new town, I noticed that every time we saw a chain store or big box store that we frequented in our former town, and which was within a short driving distance of our new digs, one or both of us gave a sigh of relief or even a little cheer.

Oh. My. God! Are we hooked or what?

We felt a greater sense of security every time we found a store that sold the things we were used to. Some of those things were, in fact, real necessities, for instance we are vegans both out of medical necessity as well as philosophy. Unfortunately, Central Pennsylvania, where we have settled, is a bit of a food desert when it comes to vegetarian and vegan restaurants and organic food stores. This we knew before we moved, but we felt we would be able to make-do. So when we discovered our first health food store and that it had many of the foods we were used to, we were elated and felt much more secure.

But the same thing happened when we found stores that only offered the extra, often unnecessary, amenities like a Best Buy or Macy’s. We could certainly live pretty well without their goods, but it still made us feel better that they were close-by – again, more security in the consumption zone!

So there was both the need for things that actually keep us alive and healthy, and the consumption of stuff that merely tickled our fancies. We are far more hooked than I thought, but it goes much deeper in my reptile brain than just feeling good about buying stuff. It has become a deeply emotional thing that is tied (perhaps illicitly) directly to my need to survive!

It reminds me of an explanation I heard some years ago, about why certain scenes in photos or paintings, or even just the mental image of a scene makes us feel good.

Take for instance the pictures we’ve all seen innumerable times of a farm or cabin nestled in a pretty valley like the old Currier and Ives paintings. It might be a winter scene with a wisp of smoke curling from a chimney, or a summer day with a stream flowing by the house and a field of wild flowers behind the barn. Even though we may think such pictures ubiquitous or trite because we’ve seen them so often, they still give us a bit of a good feeling.

We see in them security and safety as well as family and social traditions that we know and are comfortable with. Cabins or farms set in a fertile, protected valley make us feel good because they imply good crops and sufficient food. Surrounding hills offer protection from storms. The chimney smoke on a winter’s evening means warmth and safety. These elements guarantee that we will have ample food and that we will be protected from danger.

But 21st Century consumer culture has corrupted our basic assumptions about safety and security: much different than Currier and Ives or those that are presented in the Bible. We have substituted a plethora of consumer goods in big box stores set along congested highways in place of a barn by a stream, or a family sitting by the fireplace on a winter’s night.

Certainly our consumer version of safety and security creates an uglier picture than those of Currier and Ives, but also a whole lot more dangerous to our well-being as individuals, families, and society – but still… I felt uncomfortably better knowing my 21st Century need for gadgetry and supra-abundance could be easily satisfied in our new surroundings – whether I actually satisfy those needs or not.

Even our brain stems, those remnant reptile brains of ours, have now been imprinted with a corrupted sense of security… one that ultimately makes us much less secure and more vulnerable.

So, I guess the first thing for me to do is to notice that this is happening to me and to at least be awake to what this corrupted sense of security is likely to lead me to do. I now know that I feel this way, so I can pay much closer attention to what I am doing, or rather what the snake in my head wants me to do.

Gotcha!

• Consumer Culture and Economics , Coping With Consumer Culture , Psychology
• Comments (0)

admin January 9th, 2012

I thought I knew where I lived and where belonged. I had good friends and neighbors who I could depend on, and who could depend on me. I had a good, simple-living, stable life – generally knew where I was going, if only to the grocery store or barber shop. Scheduled myself to meditate, pray, and exercise every day; attended church meetings and worship every week. Knew the good places I could eat on my vegan diet, and of course knew all the organic food stores in our area. I posted to this blog regularly and worked with my wife doing our puppetry. In short, a good, simple, somewhat predictable life.

Well forget all that!

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything to this blog in four months. That’s because we willfully threw away that comfortable stability and moved from the Washington D.C. area to Central Pennsylvania.

Amazingly disruptive! Sure I knew there would be the usual hassles of a move and that we’d be starting out all over again and would have to get familiar with a new area, but I was totally unprepared for the emotional disruption. The move made me incredibly aware of how dependant I have been on my physical environment for my emotional and cognitive well-being as well as my identity.

In early September we decided to make a long-dreamed-of move. Being ‘formally’ retired, we wanted to move away from the traffic, noise, and confusion of the urban D.C. area to a much less expensive, more picturesque place closer to some of our extended family.

Because the real estate market was extremely slow and our house was neither in an upscale part of town, nor in particularly good repair, we knew it would take a long time to sell and we’d have plenty of time to deal with shifting our puppetry business to a new area, slowly, carefully say goodbye to church members, friends, and neighbors, pack, and find a new place while we waited for a buyer. This plan also gave our brains and emotions time to adjust to leaving ‘home’ and finding a new one.

Wrong!

Our house sold in 1 (one) day and we suddenly had no place to live! You can imagine the chaotic, disruptive, rest of the story.

The past four months have been a bit of a blur, and I’ve had virtually no time for a number of important things, like writing this blog.

But back to where I started: I have found that my sense of who I am and how I live – small habits as well as big philosophies – is incredibly dependent on my comfort with my community and knowing where everything is and how I fit into it all. I am really an organic part of my environment and when it changes – I change. What I care about and what I do change.

Our old house (it was a 1920’s arts and crafts bungalow), was always in need of large scale repair and looked it. It was hard to keep clean and would have needed a major interior and exterior renovation to come up to 21st Century, nay, 20th Century standards. It certainly had its charms, but it had not been well-built to begin with and over the years had been poorly maintained before we bought it. So we got used to living a “wrong side of the tracks” sort of existence – but which was mostly satisfying. We lived in a wonderful neighborhood which more than made up for the condition of the house.

One of the reasons for our move was to find a much less expensive place so we could pay-down our mortgage because we’re retired and no longer have the potential for an increasing income to look forward to.

Here’s the kicker for a couple of simple livers: we found a place in Pennsylvania that was not only much cheaper, allowing us to cut our monthly expenses, BUT was also much newer (“mid-fifties modern”), was in gorgeous, immaculate condition, and looked like a million dollars.

Culture shock!

I love the place! It looks great in all its classical modernism; much of it looks newly minted; the floors don’t move and creak when you walk on them, everything is well-built – even classy. I could go on, but the bottom line is that a couple of simple livers are now having to adjust to a house that, a couple of months ago, seemed beyond our means, and did not look particularly ‘simple.’

Besides, as simple living Christians we’re supposed to be lovers of people, not especially lovers of stuff!

But for us, this house is much more affordable and is certainly more modest than some other homes in the area. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like modesty since it is so much better looking and better built than our previous house. It’s a place that I would have coveted long before I found the pleasures and advantages of living simply – a time when having bigger and better was one of my mantras. So living in this new house sort of feels like cheating.

And of course during this transition I haven’t been working on the blog and have been feeling something of a traitor to the movement. In fact my anxiety over the hundreds of details around the move and then finding our way around a new locale was so high that I all but gave up my meditation and prayer practice – I just couldn’t concentrate enough to sit still! So I not only felt like a traitor but like a double-agent!
Who was this person living in this new place? It sure wasn’t the same old me.

Things have been gradually settling down. We’re finding our way around – but haven’t found a home church yet – and I’ve picked up my prayer and meditation life, and now, here tonight, I’m back to blogging.

And of course there is the obvious: living simply doesn’t necessarily mean having to live on a subsistence farm or in a run-down house – it means living with less than our consumer culture dictates and using our resources, however many we have or don’t have, for others rather than thinking only of ourselves.

I’ve figured out that I’ve simply lost some of my usual geographical guideposts for how well I’m doing with that and I’ll have to reorient myself to some new ones.

Sorry for my absence but I’m getting it back together again and I hope to be posting random simple thoughts as regularly as possible… in fact I think I feel one coming on right now, so I’d better get on it.

Peace and Joy
Steve

Tags: Commentary

• Consumer Culture and Economics , Coping With Consumer Culture , Psychology
• Comments (2)

admin August 22nd, 2011

What truly amazes me is that virtually everyone, spurred on by politicians and the media, continually calls for an economic recovery, i.e., a return to the pre-recession economy. This would mean a return to high rates of consumption, increased debt to both pay for the goods and make more profit for lenders (since actual incomes are unlikely to go up sufficiently to pay for the increased spending – or if they did go up sufficiently we would have rapidly rising inflation), a housing market also at pre-recession levels of sales and profitability, and so forth.

If I’m not mistaken, these are the conditions that brought about the crisis to begin with. In other words most people want to return to an unsustainable economic model featuring still more bubbles and busts. Eventually, of course, this leads to “The Great Bubble” from which the economy cannot recover – that’s what eventually happens in pyramid schemes, the Great Macroeconomic Pyramid Scheme.

So tell me again why so many people want to return to these conditions! Are our memories really that short? Are we all really slow learners?

No, don’t bother – I know the answer.

Good old homo economicus – you and me, in macroeconomic speak – and our various organizations and institutions (mutual funds, 401K’s, banks, political parties, special interest groups like the Sierra Club and the NRA) have far too much of our egos, money, and lives invested in clinging to the old model. We’re all hoping that somewhere in that perverse convoluted mess, we will make out OK financially, and we’re too frightened to seriously consider any other way of living.

We’re going to continue blindly doing the same things that have not worked in the past in the hope that they might miraculously work this time around.

As a society we still really want our gadgets, cars, houses, and golf course retirement homes, regardless of the cost to society as a whole or the risk that the whole model will collapse. We’re still just not willing to give up anything in order to survive over the long term.

I am no longer naïve enough to believe that those of us who care about this can suddenly bring about a revolution in our 21st Century group-think so that everyone gives up the old model and moves to subsistence farms in West Virginia (West Virginians wouldn’t like that anyway!).

I’m not calling in the Marines to bring about the revolution, although God knows the Marines need something useful to do, and I’m not going to read the riot act to society (again)…

BUT, I do think that Christian simple livers must continue to encourage more and more people to join us in focusing on the things that are truly important in life instead of just consuming and going deeper in debt to chase ephemeral dreams of a gadget-driven good life. We can show more people how to live mindfully and compassionately instead. And when the Great Bubble finally does burst in a few years, we will have laid some really sound ground work for a real recovery – built on rock, not on sand. If, in our simple living, we are also caring about the millions of people who will have been badly injured in such an economic train wreck, we will be able to show the wisdom of living for people instead of living for stuff. And maybe many more people will join us.

We need to work hard at this because we know neither the day nor the hour when we will be needed and we need to be ready with an attractive, workable alternative.

If the Spirit is with us, we’ll be able to do that. Let’s keep on truckin’ and praying!

• Consumer Culture and Economics , Fomenting Change
• Comments (9)

admin August 8th, 2011

Speaking of “the love that passes all understanding,” this magnificent phrase has passed my understanding for years. I always misconstrued it to mean only that I was being loved even when I didn’t deserve it. But I now see that it means much more and that it has important implications for Christian simple living.

I recently read Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “Living Buddha, Living Christ” which made me think that I have actually been misunderstanding this incomprehensible love with my usual ego-centric, anthropomorphic mindset. What I failed to understand was that God loves his whole world in a way we could never comprehend. He doesn’t just love Christians or Jews or all humans. He loves his entire universe of which we are only a small, but important part.

To put it in simplistically concrete terms, he loves the squirrel in the oak tree, the dandelion in the lawn, the pebble along the road, the black hole at the center of our galaxy… and you and me. And he created our universe so that all its parts are inter-related, each part depending on all the others. After all, physicists and cosmologists tell us that we are made of star dust as are all other living and non-living things – the whole earth in fact.

God created and sustains the universe as a very inter-dependent place. Without all these other cosmic and planetary puzzle pieces, you and I could not exist. That’s the way God built the place. It’s the way we’ve inherited it.

He loves it all – read the creation stories again. That is a love that passes all understanding. Maybe even more incomprehensible is that, in spite of the fact that we continue to treat the parts of the universe that are not us as if it were just so much valueless flotsam and jetsam, he continues to let us get away with it. If you or I created something we loved and someone we loaned it to messed it up, we would be none too happy.

In my darkest moments I sometimes think we should consider that God may have built the cosmos in the same way as ancient Egyptian tombs were built: the universe or at least our planet, may be booby trapped so that like ancient grave robbers and vandals, we would be killed if we messed with it. That should keep us awake at night!

God probably didn’t do that – perhaps another measure of his non-understandable love.

But my point is that I have greatly underestimated the phrase – he loves even more vastly than just being able to forgive our blind self-interest.

And if this is the incomprehensibly vast love of our creator, then should we not reciprocate with a love of God’s entire creation that goes beyond our short-sighted self-interest that is currently destroying that creation?

This is the true task of Christian simple living: loving God back by loving all God has created including each other – and living as though we really believed it minute by minute!

• Environment , Spiritual Development
• Comments (0)

admin July 25th, 2011

Although some of us have a desire to live simply and care for God’s creation as well as the future of our grandkids, other people either do not have the desire or do not act on their desire, so many of us in the First World don’t live simply and are a net drain on the planet.

So what to do? A fine for not living simply enough? Taxes on all consumer goods? No more free parking at Walmart? Or just keep on hoping and praying?

Some or all of these actions may actually come to pass at some point because we may be forced to take stringent measures as resources become ever more limited, the world gets still hotter, and the earth more polluted. There are already a number of such measures on the books and advocacy groups and governments are always considering new laws, taxes, and fines to help curb our assault on creation.

But for Christians, for right now, why not take a different tack?

I believe that the root-cause of our abuse of the planet and all of its animal, vegetable, and mineral resources is due to… lack of peace!

Inner peace.

We covet more stuff, money, and influence, but we decline to consider the pain we cause for other people and other species as we enlarge our already gigantic footprints. We go to any expense or distance to have what we want…

… all because we are not at peace with ourselves.

If we really loved ourselves, our lives, and our world, and lived with joy – enjoying that is in front of us and under our feet at this very moment – we would be at peace with ourselves and everyone and everything around us.

I don’t believe that most of us are really at peace with ourselves. Despite the years of sitting in pews and hearing the good news preached to us; despite all the prayers for peace and compassion for others around the world; despite all the promises and good intentions – many of us are still at war with ourselves.

We aren’t satisfied with who we are despite knowing we are all God’s children, and that we are made exactly as we are supposed to be. We are not satisfied with how we look, how we feel, or what we have, because there is something inside us that makes us feel incomplete – that something is not quite right – we’re not as we should be.

So we’re sometimes angry with ourselves and maybe a little bitter, and perhaps feeling unjustly deprived of that thing that would make us truly worthwhile, happy, and complete.

We are often at war with ourselves.

So we go out each day with the vain hope of getting that one thing (or all those things) that will make us like ourselves a little more, that would make us at least a little better, a little more lovable… and finally at peace with ourselves.

But there aren’t that many consumer products in the entire universe, because, of course, it isn’t the job, the toys, cars, houses, jewelry, or money that makes us who we are… those are all totally external to us and can’t change us at all, except to make us poorer or even more stressed-out.

So how do we make peace with ourselves and the world, and stop ourselves from destroying the home God gave us?

I can’t answer that question for others, but I can say what has worked for me. Maybe it’ll work for you.

I have always deeply believed in the love of God and the life that Jesus taught us to live. I knew that Jesus died for our sins and that made me ‘OK,’ but for many years I was not able to translate that knowledge into a deep sense of well-being, of feeling loved (as opposed to intellectually knowing that I was supposed to be loved). I couldn’t find a way to change my soul to fit my beliefs, so my Christian life never became a heart-felt, moment to moment, practice.

I’m pretty sure that there were other people around me who were having the same experience but held on to the hope that things would get better or they just kept up appearances for the sake of friends and family. So my faith and church experience didn’t bring me any peace to speak of, and I didn’t live simply or give a thought about the planet.

But as you might have guessed I finally figured it out.

I decided that I had to get deeply inside myself instead of running away from myself before I could find peace. I had been scared to death that there was really nothing in there – no one who could stand before god. But I decided that there had to be something in there, something that would connect me to God and the Kingdom and to other people.

I’ve written in previous posts that through Christian contemplation and meditation I learned to still the nonsense going on in my head, to find myself, to find God, and to finally know what was meant by “The peace of God that passes all understanding….”

I repeat this here because it led me to a new insight about Christian simple living.

The more peaceful I felt, even in scattered small doses, the less I needed the reassurance of ‘stuff.’ I didn’t have as much of that knee-jerk reaction of wanting what I didn’t have. I began to understand and, more importantly, to feel what Jesus meant when he said

“… do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them…” (Matt. 6:25)

I had read this passage and heard it preached more times than I can count, and although it sounded real nice, I couldn’t figure out how to make it work for me. It just wasn’t real for me. I needed stuff: a reputation, a good job, and a nice car. I needed my dreams of a yacht and a plane. And so I squeezed life to get a few more things out of it to make up for my insecurity.

But my God! What a wonderful gift that peace turned out to be! To feel, and feel deeply, love and peace as though it was born in me, a part of my bones.

And having peace within oneself is actually “being peace.”

Internal peace leads to compassion for those who our life styles and wanting affects. To be loved leads to loving, and to love is to be compassionate, and to know that everything we do every day is an act of compassion. Everything we do, everything we want, buy, or take is done with Jesus whispering in our ears…
“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matt. 25:45)

What we do matters. Feeling “The peace that passes all understanding” leads us to live and act peacefully toward all other people and God’s universe as a whole. That’s what we are doing when we live simply out of our Christian convictions and the Holy Spirit, and I believe that is the true driver for living simply.

Maybe if we each work hard to find that peace within ourselves and teach others along the way, we’ll have many more people living simply and doing it as a pure reflex reaction to the God’s peace and love.

• Environment , Meditation and Prayer , Spreading the Word
• Comments (3)

admin June 13th, 2011

(This post was graciously submitted by Maria Rainier)

For some, shopping can be a form of recreation. We head out to the mall on the weekend with no plan in mind and no specific item that we need to buy. The point is just to be there. Just to look around and see what we might like to buy. For others, even necessary trips to the grocery store or to the department store can result in spending far more than we planned. Learning to recognize and control impulse buying can make a big difference in controlling our overall spending habits, which will help us limit our unchecked consumerism, as well as help us to develop better financial habits. Here are a few ways to help limit your own impulse shopping:

Get Rid of Credit Cards

They make it too easy to make mindless purchases. If you don’t have to worry about paying for the item now, payment becomes an abstract concept. Sure, you know how much you overdid it when the bill lands in your mailbox, but when you’re at the store eyeing a new pair of boots, that bill is more of a concept than a reality. Leave the credit cards at home or — better yet — cancel them for good.

Make a List

When you head out to the store, make sure you have a list of what you need to buy. When you feel tempted to buy something else, check your list. If it’s not there, don’t buy it. This is especially useful when you’re making big purchases such as at the grocery store. While items you buy at the grocery store may not be considered “big purchases,” your total bill can add up significantly, especially if you have a large family, and especially if you don’t curb impulse shopping.

Want v. Need

If you feel tempted to buy something, ask yourself why. Is it because you want this item, or do you really need it? If you want it, why do you want it? Understanding your motivation can often help you mitigate your shopping impulses. Check your mood. Are you bored? Tired? Shopping can be fun and exciting, but it’s ultimately not going to assuage these feelings. Go for a walk instead!

Don’t Go to Malls

They are designed to entice you to buy more. They offer a buffet of flashy products that are presented in such a way as to make you believe you must have them. You will also start to have thoughts like, “Well, since I’m here, maybe I do need to get some new shoes.” Don’t allow yourself to be tempted by these settings.

Cash = Time

The next time you reach for your pocketbook, consider this: How much time did it take you to earn the money that you are about to spend on this item? If you are about to buy an iPad that costs $400, chances are that you had to work 20-40 hours to make that much money. Don’t think of items in terms of how much money they cost, but in terms of how much time they cost. That iPad cost you nearly a week of your time. Is it really worth it?

30-Day Rule

Do you really want that item? Like, really, really want it? Write it down, note how much it costs, and put it on your refrigerator or somewhere else you can see it. In 30 days, if you still want it, then you can buy it. You’ll be surprised at how little interest you have at the end of the 30 days.

What other tips do you have for curbing impulse shopping? Have any of these tips worked for you?

Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education where she’s written on financial aid resources along with a guide to mental health counseling jobs. In her spare time, she enjoys yoga, playing piano, and working with origami.

• Coping With Consumer Culture , How To's , Living More Simply , Psychology
• Comments (0)