Dangers of a Consumer Culture
by CAPP-USA
A consumer culture is obsessed with buying and having stuff, losing sight of what’s important.
What is a Culture?
Culture is the shared values, beliefs, customs, behaviors, and practices of a group of people. “All human activity takes place within a culture and interacts with culture.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 51)
What culture identifies as important lays the foundation for its social, political and economic structures as well as for its priorities and answers to moral questions.
So, while “[a] given culture reveals its overall understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption” (Pope St. John Paul II, 36) “[m]an is understood in a more complete way…through his language, history, and the position he takes towards the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love, work and death.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 24)
More importantly, “[a]t the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes” to priorities, moral questions, societal goals, and “to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 24)
What is a Consumer Culture?
A consumer culture stimulates and entices our deep need for security and status but then constantly threatens those needs by creating a desire for ever more goods and services.
In a consumer culture, “enough” is an ever-receding goal. Excess is normalized. It encourages always needing the new and more. We are blinded by ‘stuff’. “The Lord comes, but you prefer to follow the longing you feel; your brother knocks at your door, but he is a nuisance to you because he upsets your plans — and this is the attitude of consumerism.” (Pope Francis)
In a consumer culture, waste is rampant, and we become a “throw-away culture” where even people are commodified & disposable. We “become not the lords and masters but the slaves of material wealth”. (Pope Pius XII, 1a)
Catholic social teaching distinguishes between consuming based on true human needs and consumerism as a cultural & economic system which has fallen prey to “soul stifling materialism” (Pope St. Paul VI, 19), and is itself consumed by “attitudes and life styles… which are objectively improper and often damaging to physical and spiritual health”. (Pope St. John Paul II, 36)
The Dangers of a Consumer Culture?
“Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence. When this question is eliminated, the culture and moral life of nations are corrupted.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 24)
Consumerism eats away at our society; it “anaesthetizes the heart” creating “dependence on consumption”. (Pope Francis)
It “makes you believe that life depends solely on what you have”. (Pope Francis)
Consumerism has penetrated society so much that “Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded.” (Pope Francis, 53)
Consumerism is deadly to a culture. It leads us to “shut out others” (Pope St. Paul VI, 19) and “is a virus that tarnishes faith at its root“. (Pope Francis)
“The worship of mammon, possessions and power is proving to be a counter-religion…The desire for happiness degenerates…into an unbridled, inhuman craving”. (Pope Benedict XVI)
“Neither individuals nor nations should regard the possession of more and more goods as the ultimate objective.” (Pope St. Paul VI, 19)
What is the Solution?
Let’s be clear: “It is not wrong to want to live better what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards ‘having’ rather than ‘being’, and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 36)
Start by asking yourself: “Do I really need all these material objects and complicated recipes for living?” (Pope Francis) Probably not! We must learn to “subordinate [our] material and instinctive dimensions to [our] interior and spiritual ones.” (Pope St. John Paul II, 36)
We are called to “moderation and the capacity to be happy with little” (Pope Francis, 222) and “[s]uch sobriety, when lived freely and consciously, is liberating.” (Pope Francis, 223)
“Since a consumer culture exists that wants to prevent us from living in accordance with the Creator’s plan, we must have the courage to create islands, oases, and then great stretches of land of Catholic culture where the Creator’s design is lived out.” (Pope Benedict XVI)
Bottom Line
We need Christ! “Once Jesus dwells in our heart, the center of life is no longer my ravenous and selfish ego, but the One who is born and lives for love.” (Pope Francis)
