In the midst of an economic crisis, the urge to seek out culprits is understandable. Our present situation, however, affords an opportunity to go beyond placing blame (much of it well deserved) on Wall Street, the Bush administration, aggressive lenders, Alan Greenspan and others. Our crisis is not simply a matter of irresponsibility by a minority of bad actors. This plant needed good soil and a conducive climate to flourish. This favorable environment is American consumer culture.
Image - planewalker001
A comprehensive analysis of how American materialism fed into our current predicament not only exceeds the scope of this essay, but perhaps also the ability of any living human. However, it is possible to point to developments that give insight into how our present climate has taken shape.
When I speak of American materialism, I’m thinking specifically of our collective expectations of what constitutes the good life. What has become typical of us in terms of the things we have (PDA’s, cell phones, big screen TV’s, cable, big mortgages, homes bigger than we need, eating out, cars newer than we need, designer everything and entertainment spending greater than we can afford) and the way we finance them, is not a given.
The modern American vision of the good life developed primarily over the last century, but it had its beginning in the mass industrial/commercial/media revolution that took place during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Before 1885, most white males owned property, did not work for a salary, did not have a regulated work schedule and did not go to a workplace away from home. Price tags did not develop until the mid-19th century because they were unnecessary. Customers bought things from people they knew so they could just ask how much things cost.¹
Industrialization developed partly in the belief that more efficient mass production and lower prices would dramatically improve the character of American culture. However, if customers only purchased what they needed, America’s factories could not be kept in operation. Supply would far exceed demand. Corporate America needed to develop the “desire to desire.” It was not enough for Americans to want things; they had to be made to feel that having the things they wanted was necessary for their successful participation in American life.
Mall Madness Game by Hasbro
The modern American sense of fashion developed as a means of reinforcing the rightness of acquisition. Americans had to be trained to see rewards not as heavenly, but as this worldly and concrete. Those who fell behind contemporary trends risked being perceived as out of touch or irrelevant. As one writer put it in 1903, “Wearing last year’s coat is seen as evidence of an inability to buy.”²
But who would communicate and reinforce this outlook to the masses? Mass media emerged, first in the guise of newspapers and later as radio, film and television, as agents of the fulfillment of human desire. They modeled fulfillment through the stories they told. They were financed by money they made capturing audiences, at whom advertisers could direct their messages.³
Although Christian fundamentalists labeled this preoccupation with things “worldliness,” it was not foisted on the country by a small commercial elite. Many Protestant leaders subscribed to a parallel belief system known as Americanism. While most of us are familiar with the term Manifest Destiny as denoting the American commitment to extend the nation from one coast to the other, Americanism constituted a kind of consumerist Manifest Destiny.
Through a blending of Protestant belief and American nationalism, this view argued that America had a responsibility to extend prosperity to all its people and to deepen the nature of prosperity as well. The industrial drive for profit and the hunger of newly born factories, supported by the Americanist mandate, facilitated the rise of American commercial culture, which evolved into our present consumerist preoccupation.⁴
Wet Seal store display. Image - ATIS547
Within the last decade or so, the drive to acquire and to live at the edge of our means, has been further fueled by planned obsolescence. (The notion is not new, but its permeation of American consumer goods is.)
Walmart’s emergence and dominance have been fueled by its ability to offer cheaper goods, made less expensive partly due to their poorer quality and partly through a host of unethical, cost-cutting business practices. While foreign auto producers like Toyota and Honda have continued to grow in American market share, American auto manufacturers have clung to the model of planned obsolescence and marketing strategies (“It’s got a hemi!” or Howie Long’s current inane Chevrolet ads) that appeal to vanity rather than to reliability or superior performance.
These same American companies, in the relentless search for profitability, have sent much of their manufacturing outside the country at the cost of many American jobs. As a result, the consumer base for American products has eroded.
So all this is interesting, but what is the point? The point is that our fallenness is facilitated by the voices we listen to and the representations we ingest. Although our culture tells us that above all we are consumers down to our very DNA, we are not.
The pre-industrial era was no utopia. However, the current crisis points out how many of us have become entangled in what has become normal. The gospel gives us sight that allows us to expose the fact that our current materialist climate is concocted. It became normal as people like us rode the tide until the clever messaging became part of who we are.
We do need things. There are many things that are pleasurable and enrich our lives that are good. I am not advocating asceticism. I am advocating that we inventory what gives us worth and pleasure. Then we should consider whether the orientation necessary to make this array of acquisitions and lifestyle choices possible is a good thing.
Our current crisis is making it chic to live cheaply. There is great freedom in opting out and making room for things like board games, talking, reading, being physically active or, dare I say it, making time to listen to God. Social commentators have pointed out that many local civic groups and volunteer organizations that brought a sense of self worth to earlier generations have disappeared. Instead, today many of us exist as appendages of our appliances or as nodes in an impersonal global impression exchange. We can make different choices.
At present the siren song of materialism is weaker because most of us cannot afford it. Our time is a forum for exposing our current state of normalcy and for talking about where true self-worth and pleasure lie. By the grace of God, we can speak like no other people about the redeemed use of good gifts in their rightful roles. May our rethought lifestyles support the thoughts we share.
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¹William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 3–38.
²Ibid.
³Ibid.
⁴Eldon Eisenach, The Lost Promise of Progressivism. (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1994).
Chris Simmons is Editor of gospelandculture.org and Executive Director of The Gospel & Culture Project.
