A Word on Consumerism

Our economy is in trouble; that news is so old it has whiskers. But what worries me is that so many of the plans to improve it are based on encouraging folks to buy things. That, too, isn't exactly rocket science. I long ago taught my students that we all worry about keeping at least some of our money, yet the fact is the economy, both for our own personal world as well as the world in general, is worse off when the money isn't moving. I still hold to that. Nevertheless, I think we ought to consider the value in buying things simply to buy them too.

How much junk do we accumulate just because we can? How often do we buy things on impulse which we never really use? How many times have we indulged ourselves out of nothing more than mere selfishness? These are the kinds of questions which come to my mind when I think about our economy. Am I the only one who believes that such attitudes, while not necessarily immoral, still manage to have a certain bad odor about them?

True, when we buy we invariably help our fellow citizens whose jobs rely on our willingness to purchase what can only be, in many instances, unneeded items. That itself is probably the main reason for which I cannot call such otherwise wantonness wrong. Yet it too begs a few pertinent questions, not the least of which is whether we as a society ought to encourage businesses which cater to trivialities. Isn't there more that we all could be doing with our time and efforts than acquiring stuff just to acquire it?

The Church has a word for for that kind of system: consumerism. Consumerism is essentially selfish, and again, that does not make it bad. A bit of me first is what ensures that necessary things get done, important things like seeing to the clothing and the feeding and all for ourselves and our families. Still, that cannot mean that merely because something can be made and marketed that it ought to be made and marketed. And it cannot mean that we have an obligation to buy it simply to help others out.

We're all in this together, yes, so I should do what I can even for the general economy. The rest of society, which the word economy often represents, should, however, work with me on that. Don't tell me I need a new car when my old one works perfectly fine, or that I need to remodel a kitchen which I just fixed up five years ago. Give me something worth buying and we'll take it from there. Otherwise, we're only feeding our egos. That cannot, in the long run, be healthy.