You are your dollars

“For decades, Americans have been known as epic consumers, but it would be more accurate to call us epic upgraders….It is so neatly woven into the double helix of our DNA that we hardly notice it…..

Forget the upgrade. The game now is avoiding the downgrade. This is grim and troubling, in part, because so much of our consumer culture is built around the enticements of the Better....

Entire corporate strategies target the bottomless American appetite for the upgrade.

In the United States, upgrade-mania has bred a sense of entitlement, which has only stoked upgrade demands.

But there has long been an on-again, off-again war in the American soul between the forces of consumerism and the countervailing force of austerity. The consumers have had the upper hand for decades, but we might have little choice now but to find comfort in the words of the philosopher and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, who wrote, ‘Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/weekinreview/26segal.html

In my first economics post, I discussed the economics of the American system. I grant you, there were oversimplifications, but I think the point is clear: the American economic system is based on an obsession with expansion. Corporations must turn profit, the economy must grow. I asked the question, What happens if we are over-extended?

In the next posts, I want to explore how this over-extension affects the self. More than that, I think we lose the self in the system. The self disappears. I find, my friends, that there are many reasons why we must say, “Fuck the system. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” The first way in which we lose the self is through discontent and dissatisfaction.

The American economy is based on sowing discontent and dissatisfaction. It is based on desiring the desire of the other. Others have it, customers have given it rave reviews on Amazon.com, a celebrity looks good in it, my friends love it, the neighbors just got a new one. In the American marketing matrix, we cannot be content. We cannot afford to be content. If our economy is in recession (i.e., it is contracting, not expanding), then people lose jobs. Politicians talk about our dire need for them to fix the economy and help Joe the Plummer. Why do we need to help Joe the Plummer, exactly? Truly. I wonder. Is it just so he can afford to get more stuff he doesn’t need? There is a real sense in which we screw those in the lower economic classes by doing our damnedest to help them acquire more stuff that they don’t really need.

Remember, the economy must expand, which means we have to dispose of old stuff and be continually buying new stuff. We have to define ourselves as consumers, always buying more.

When this happens, we lose most of our capacity to make decisions based on what is healthy or life-giving. Or, more to the point, we lose our capacity to make decisions based on what is healthy or life-giving for us. We measure our health and wellness based on our information about what everyone else is doing. But who controls this information, in most cases? It’s either the government or Corporations, which are one and the same, both working together to keep us discontented enough to keep buying more and to grow the American economy.

If our motivation is always for the next purchase, then we are only temporarily satisfied. The thrill of a new purchase, the feeling of newness, the tingling of being reborn, it passes. We find that the stuff gets old and less exciting. “When goods increase, so do those who consume them, so what is the advantage of the owner, but to look at them?” (Ecclesiastes 5:11) But there is always something else to buy. And here’s the thing: it is not a devastating cycle. It’s a cycle, but it can be a very pleasant one. We don’t notice that the self has receded deep into the background. We don’t notice the loss. Truly.

And, unfortunately, many contemporary churches don’t help. They preach/teach, of course, that we should be satisfied with what we have, but a quick scan of the church parking lots or the annual budget often tells a different story. For example, I have a question: why does every church bulletin I’ve ever seen always show that the church isn’t quite at its annual goal? Even our churches over-extend themselves financially.

Many churches have very important reasons why they cannot preach/teach the importance of the simple life. With budgets that are fully extended, churches quite literally cannot afford to alienate the affluent. So, rather than preach/teach about the spiritual significance of simplifying and severely downgrading, churches teach/preach that the “love” of money is the problem—it’s okay to have it.

So, then when we preach/teach on giving, we tell people that they need to give more. Maintaining the same over-extended, American standard of living and adding more ministry/church giving means that the church-goer must keep putting the hours in at work in order to pay for the Lord’s work. This is all contributing to sowing discontent among the religious. The result is a loss of self.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Even the “giving” of many church goers winds up going to support church buildings, church administrative expenses, or teen mission’s trips—in other words, all the “giving” comes back to benefit the givers, even if only indirectly.

Jesus talks about identifying our “treasure,” because what we invest in is where our heart is. But talking about the location of our “hearts” is really just another word for talking about the “self.” It’s about identity. It is as simple as saying we are our economic choices. Our “self,” our identity, is found in what we invest in. In a culture dominated by the corporate marketing of discontent, our identity is our dollars.

And what I mean to say is that even those of us who are insightful enough to write clever blog posts about the loss of the self are in the same boat. Anyone who participates is on the same ship.

You are your dollars. There is no escape.