Consumer Hedonism
This is not only a new frame, but a new idea. I tried to shorten the essay as much as possible, but it's still pretty long -- but definitely worth reading -- even better to read the original, which I've linked.
This is from a wonderful sermon by Doug Muder. It's on what the right and left have in common. And on the third group that is the elephant in the living room....
find it at:
http://freeandresponsible.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Right and Left Together: What Religious Liberals and Conservatives Have in Common
…In fact, religious conservatives and liberals share more concerns and beliefs than either commonly admits. Both have loyalties that go beyond self and the convenience of the moment. Both reject the materialism of popular culture. Both seek something more substantial than the momentary satisfaction of desire or the endless striving after status. The committed [liberal] life is a different way to pursue these goals, not a denial of them.
… Religious liberals and conservatives alike feel that America is slipping away from them because it actually is. This other religion, which is neither liberal nor conservative nor even moderate, is actually in control.
…So it's tempting, when we talk about religion, to leave Consumer Hedonism out…. I need to explain why it makes sense to call Consumer Hedonism a religion at all.
I think the reason Consumer Hedonism looks different from other religions is that it's the dominant religion of our society. The dominant religion always looks different.
You see, when a religion truly dominates a society, it's like air. You don't see it, and you can't point to it because it's everywhere. A dominant religion doesn't seem to have members because everyone is a member. It doesn't seem to have a temple because the World is its temple. The reason we don't see the temple of Consumer Hedonism is because we live in it. We can't get outside of it.
…The fundamental questions a religion needs to answer aren't about God and the afterlife, they're about life here and now. What should we be trying to do? Where should we look for fulfillment? What is going to save us from misery? What really matters and why? Some religions may need a theory of God or the afterlife to make sense out of their answers, but Consumer Hedonism doesn't. That doesn't mean it's not a religion.
So what are Consumer Hedonism's answers? Basically this: Only two things are really worth doing in life – satisfying your desires and projecting the right image. If you could do both, you'd be as fulfilled as it is possible to be. So how do you do it? You satisfy your desires by buying things and by manipulating people into giving you what you want. And you cast the right image by aligning yourself with the saints of Consumer Hedonism, the celebrities.
No Sunday school teaches us how to worship the celebrities, but we all do it. Sometimes we imitate them. We wear their t-shirts and sunglasses. We repeat their famous lines, which we know by heart, as if we learned them from a catechism. Or we worship them from afar. We know their nicknames, their cars, their pets, and the convoluted mythology of who has been married to who.
If you fall out of step with the celebrities, no church council has to vote to shun you. It happens automatically. Conversations just pass you by. Everyone else laughs and you're there saying “What? What?”
But if you could be one with the celebrities, if you could have the same car or the same haircut or learn to flash the same smile – you'd be so cool. How could you not be totally fulfilled?
Except for the Amish and a few other closed communities, every child in America is raised Consumer Hedonist. Most of us still practice it. …
…Most of us do get disillusioned at some point, because Consumer Hedonism is all sizzle and no steak. You actually can't be fulfilled by satisfying your desires and impressing people. Brad Pitt and Britney Spears will not save you. We all know that at some level, but Consumer Hedonism laughs at our knowledge. It sells us movies about its own emptiness and invites us to project an image of being wise to it all. You can buy things to flesh that image out, and imitate a whole other pantheon of celebrities. "This medallion comes from Tibet. It's, like, so spiritual."
No matter how many times we fail to consume our way to fulfillment, it always seems like our own fault. We bought the wrong things. We picked the wrong celebrities. (Tom Cruise really did not come through for me this year. And I don't even want to talk about Michael Jackson.) Salvation-by-coolness could still work, if you were just a little bit cooler.
No it couldn't. Don't try again. Don't try to do better this time. It doesn't work.
It doesn't work because there really is something deep and important going on in life, and you can only find fulfillment by connecting with those deeper values. This is the message of both liberal and conservative religion. Both. If you can't hear that message in the other side, listen harder.
Liberals and conservatives alike reject the emptiness of Consumer Hedonism, and nurture values that transcend desire and image: Values like family and friends and community. Compassion for the stranger. A just society. Appreciating the wonder of creation. Building a personal relationship with Beauty and with Knowledge and with Understanding. When those values are part of your experience of every moment, when you have trained yourself to experience them as immediately as you experience your physical desires, you're there. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
…recognize our common struggle against Consumer Hedonism and its empty values. The beginning of a productive liberal/conservative dialog is for both sides to acknowledge that we share a nightmare, a Dystopia:
• Where all relationships are transient.
• Where life is cheap.
• Where winning is everything.
• Where no one will sacrifice for the common good.
• Where impulse satisfaction outweighs any consequences.
• Where the innocent are not protected.
• Where the old are cast aside and the next generation is left to raise itself.
• Where profit is the ultimate argument, and money answers all questions.
• Where no one is willing to stand on principle, and truth doesn't matter.
We both see that path and we both don't want to go there. In theory, we could work together to avoid it. But in practice we can't even talk about it in a civil tone. Why? Because we both imagine that Consumer Hedonism isn't really a religion, and so we let it slip out of the picture. We both forget what we've been struggling against, and instead imagine that we've been struggling with each other.
…Neither side has to lie to make its case, because Consumer Hedonism has in fact corrupted and subverted people on both sides. That's what it does, and it does it very well. You set out to make the world a better place, and you end up buying things and striking a pose. You try to take The Road Less Traveled, and you wind up at The Road Less Traveled Gift Shop. You try to walk the narrow path, and you wind up buying a t-shirt that says “I Walked the Narrow Path”. Whether you set out to the Left or to the Right, the gravity of Consumer Hedonism is always pulling you back.
So how do we restart the liberal/conservative dialog? I think we begin by recognizing the trick that has been played on both sides. We've all been left holding the bag. We all look guilty. And so we're all going to have to calmly and patiently deny accusations that we can't imagine any sane person making.
…I'm just going to ask you to think about it. What if liberals and conservatives could realize how much they have in common? What if we all understood that traditional values and progressive values are allies against the real enemy, which is no values at all?
That's the vision I want to leave you with. It may not be Eden or Utopia, but I like it.
Closing Words:
Never let your zeal outrun your charity. -- Hosea Ballou
Not specified
N/A
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None assigned
Still Preachy
The ideas are great, the logic of it being a religion does not fly though the materialism permeates our culture and creates shopping evangelist across all class and philosophy lines.
Reverend Billy has a Church of Stop Shopping, perhaps Muder should join forces.
Plain and simple, corporations control and dominate our country. We are fanatics about spending money. Try and buck the capitalism takes all system, you will be called a commie which is basically calling you a traitor. Now maybe you can use the religion argument illustratively and show Uncle Sam genuflecting in front of Haliburton, then Wal-Mart, then a gas pump, then at a Hollywood brou-haha - then you can get the picture.
The sermon is still preachy, my (conservative religious) family would not receive it well. The ideas are good but the delivery system isn't right to bridge the gap between righties and lefties.
Check out No Logo by Naomi Klein (a film), and The Corporation.
We don't have to throw out capitalism, perhaps, if a Corporation really wants to be a person, we could show him how to be a responsible citizen.
Stop Shopping
- Matter of Fact, the Church of Stop Shopping should get a hat tip. Maybe I'll try to do that. Here is their
aboutsection:
Statement of Belief :: Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir believe that Consumerism is overwhelming our lives. The corporations want us to have experiences only through their products. Our neighborhoods, "commons" places like stoops and parks and streets and libraries, are disappearing into the corporatized world of big boxes and chain stores. But if we "back away from the product" - even a little bit, well then we Put The Odd Back In God! The supermodels fly away and we're left with our original sensuality. So we are singing and preaching for local economies and real - not mediated through products - experience. We like independent shops where you know the person behind the counter or at least - you like them enough to share a story.We ask that local activists who are defending themselves against supermalls, nuke plants, gentrification -- call us and we'll come and put on our "Fabulous Worship!" Remember children... Love is a Gift Economy! -- The Rev
www.revbilly.com
adbusters.org and ABTV
I'm not sure of the exact relationship between Reverend Billy and AdBusters but you can find a lot of material that deals with materialism of various stripes, excesses of corporate media, modern day memes and value systems, counter-culture politics and philosophy, social activism in the information age and critical analysis of the advertising industry at http://www.adbusters.org You can see a Reverend Billy "short" and other AdBuster TeleVision (ABTV) videos at http://www.adbusters.org/abtv/blog/
AdBusters is an activist/pro-activism site. One of their projects was to produce environmentalism-friendly, union-made anti-corporate branding shoes using labor in Canada and the USA to show that such a thing could be done and still remain competitive with Nike sweatshop labor. http://adbusters.org/metas/corpo/blackspotshoes/home.php They also support an activist network called "culture jammers" to which I once belonged.
Their magazine is a depressing, ad-less exploration of all that is wrong with postmodernistic society in a format that is as slick and as accessible as Wired magazine. It frequently contains brilliant imagery and writings, which is unsurprising because the core of AdBusters seems to be writers and artists from the world of advertising. Even though I stopped subscribing after two years and I seldom found anything "happy" between the covers, I recommend it for at least a "try it for a year once in your life" basis because it employs radically sharp and edgy propoganda that can be instructive to people who are trying to understand techniques for communication.
New! Perceptions conflict with Lakoff's framing
Forgive me if I seem to quote something that is not in the above. I am responding to the post at http://freeandresponsible.blogspot.com/2006/11/right-and-left-together.html (which is a more direct link that the one you gave above) [Muder2006] rather than your abridged version.
There are some things Muder says that conflict with, at least, Lakoff's observations about frames used by conservatives and Lib...Lib...Progressives (cough):
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ANALYSIS OF DISCOURSE ON COGNITIVE FRAMES IN MUDER2006
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■ “*Put-downs like
do-gooderdon't disparage our desire to do good; they question its stamina.*”In the "stern father" frame, a do-gooder is actually a do-badder because he/she keeps the help-ee from learning independence and developing character.
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■ “*One of them told me more-or-less what was in the Dobson reading – that the fundamentalists he knows seem to feel just as powerless as religious liberals do.*”
Here, Muder was not listening to all of what Dobson said. Here's some excerpts from the Dobson quote he was talking about (emphasis mine):
“It contradicts everything they stand for and they also feel under attack. They feel under assault by Hollywood and they can't do anything about it...They see it and they're very alarmed about it and they can't do anything about it. They feel the culture has got their families. The culture is like a river that flows in front of us and their kids are caught in this current and they're being carried downstream and so many of them are being wounded by it. ...”
This is not just someone who feels powerless. This is someone who feels threatened, as though he is under direct attack. The distinction I make on such flimsy evidence is one that I would not have made before reading Lakoff's books, but if you think it is there to be found, it leaps out at you. Consider the difference between being trapped in a life of despair and being handcuffed and pursued by a mob led by bloodhounds. In the first, you're powerless, but you can just try to hold it together and hope that some day something might change. In the second, you're powerless AND you are forced into constant, desperate struggle that takes all of your efforts just to survive.
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In Muder2006, he quotes himself from http://uuworld.org/ideas/articles/1716.shtml [Muder2005] as saying,
■ “If there is one basic thing conservatives do not understand about religious liberals, it is [our] sense of commitment. They see us champion choice over obligation, but misunderstand our reasons. They understand us to be advocating a superficial and nihilistic way of life. They think we want to choose our own moral codes so that we can pick easy ones that rationalize our every whim. They believe that we want the freedom to define our relationships so that we can walk away from anything that looks difficult.”
In my view, this is simply not true. If there is one basic thing conservatives DO understand about religious liberals, it is our sense of commitment. Just guessing, I'd say that the “my rules rule fundamentalist” activists are probably more committed than Liberal activists generally are—I can't see many religious liberals who can match the commitment of fundies who murder abolitionists and “adopt” (implant) “snowflake babies” (spare frozen embryos in fertility clinic freezers) to keep them from being thrown away—and I am glad, because I don't want to be associated with that sort of fanatic any more than I have to. But they think we are as crazy as they are (oops! Did my partiality and bias just fart all over the place?)—after all, they think we kill babies, that we are trying to seduce their kids like a million Michael Jacksons and that we want to destroy their culture by deliberate and active intent—and someone with a “stern father” frame does not back away from a direct, personal challenge.
It is not just a case of having different values as it is from a liberal (or at least, my kind of liberal) perspective. They think that we are deliberately attacking them.
If you ask me, I'd say that Muder2006 is engaging in a bit of halo-polishing and cheerleading here. That's not a criticism, that's just part of his job.
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ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM IN FINDING COMMON AREAS OF INTEREST AND WORKING TOWARD MUTUAL GOALS BETWEEN THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND THE RELIGIOUS LEFT
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■ Framing Language Within Muder2006
<didacticism>Let's analyze the framing language, “Consumer Hedonism” he uses here.
First, let's consider “Hedonism”.
he·don·ism (hēd'n-ĭz'əm) n.
1. Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.
2. Philosophy The ethical doctrine holding that only what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is intrinsically good.
hedonist. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hedonist (accessed: January 03, 2007).
Ignore the fact that Muder2006 says that “Consumer Hedonism” is a religion and use the definition appropriate to philosophy instead. If you want to see me dissect his assertion about it being a religion, see below, but just take my word for it for now. Ignore definition 1 because it does not really fit.
Now, “Consumer”.
con·sum·er (kən-sōō'mər) n.
1. One that consumes, especially one that acquires goods or services for direct use or ownership rather than for resale or use in production and manufacturing.
2. A heterotrophic organism that ingests other organisms or organic matter in a food chain.
consumer. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/consumer (accessed: January 03, 2007).
Obviously, definition 1 is the one that matters.
He has picked two words that, in my view, are both loaded with negative connotations, especially in this context. He specifically requires his audience to consider “Consumer Hedonism” to be a religion to create a straw dog that he can later position as a common enemy of the religious liberals and the religious conservatives.
Had he not been engaging in the use of framing language, he could have used the more concise term, “materialist” and called it a “philosophy” (which it is). “Materialist” is, in my perception, a less loaded word than “hedonism” but more loaded than “consumer”. Also, his use of neologism allows him to force a new meaning on the phrase even though it is not supported by common connotations of the words.</didacticism>
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■ Framing Language for Establishing a Commonality Between the Religious Right and Religious Left
Outside the context of his sermon, “Consumer Hedonism” does not particularly sound like a religion. It sounds to me like a typical academic polysyllabic conflation, probably something to do with economics or psychology. It might also be taken for a philosophy, but until it is posed as “the religion Consumer Hedonism”, it is not a suitable straw man for his example because it would not come into direct conflict with either conservative religion or liberal religion, and therefore cannot be used as a polar opposite to the other two which might unite them. (nb: I just conducted a brief poll and 100% of those surveyed [n=1] agreed with my analysis that, of “economics, psychology, philosophy, and religion”, “Consumer Hedonism” sounded less like a religion than any of the other three words. ). It sounds nasty enough that both would probably agree that it is bad—the word “hedonism” is a good “fire in the theater” word to use when talking to religious conservatives—but it would not of itself be a cause which might unite conservatives and liberals.
Other candidate language to frame the same or a similar concept as independently “religious” might include: “Holy Materialism”, “Order of the Sacred Wallet”, “Moneychangerism”, “Creed of Greed”, and “Souls of Gold”. Other framing language that might serve the same purpose (uniting the religious left and right against a common target related to Postmodernity and Relativism) without direct reference to materialism or avarice might be more effective. Examples might include the duality “Senders of Hope” & “Cinders of Hope”, the idea of “Christ's Sandbags” or “God's Sandbags” (referring to the construction of artifices to hold back the flood of modern culture) or “the rope between us can be used to pull against each other, or to lift our faith on high”.
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■ Right and Left Working Together
The difficulty inherent in finding common ground between the religious right and the religious left, however, is not one language alone can ease. The problem is that the cognitive frames of the two are so different that religionists of the right and left could carry on a conversation during which they might agree with each other in words, while at the same time, had they gone into detail about what they meant by those words, they would have found themselves completely at odds. Examples of terms that might be considered important parts of a religionist vocabulary that would have radically different connotations for each side might include “freedom” (in general), “charity”, “family”, “marriage”, “moral values” and “religious freedom”.
┼ freedom:
─┤conservative, freedom to live life within God's laws; protection of the unborn;
─┤liberal: freedom from want, illness, poverty, violence; freedom to express yourself sexually, through unhindered speech; freedom to control your own reproduction through birth control and, when necessary, abortion
┼ charity:
─┤conservative: the obligation to help other Christians; the obligation to spread the word of God
─┤liberal: tending to the needs of the body; nurturing those who require assistance to fully join society
┼ family
─┤conservative: a man, his wife, their progeny, their ancestors
─┤liberal: those who have chosen to commit to one another, their progeny, their ancestors, those who have become integrated into the inner workings of the household
┼ marriage
─┤conservative: man, woman
─┤liberal: two people, maybe more (limited to Homo Sapiens, at least for the moment)
┼ moral values
─┤conservative: competition; help by example
─┤liberal: cooperation; help through empathy
┼ religious freedom
─┤conservative: to be free of corrupting influence; freedom of religious expression under all circumstances
─┤liberal: freedom to follow any religion of choice; separation of church and state
■ Common Ground: What Can Be Done to Transform “Cinders of Hope” to “Senders of Hope”?
Muder2006 had it right that the way to bring the two together is to identify a common enemy and focus on that. Areas where there is a plurality of religionists might exist:
┼ environmentalism:
─┤the best link I could find: http://www.braunston.com/survey/ethics2.pdf
─┤not necessarily a happy thought http://www.carmical.net/articles/environmentalism.html
─┤reconcilable interests: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_33_118/ai_80850439
─┤a not-too-informative discussion of talking about environmentalism to churches: http://www.planetizen.com/node/21472
─┤article about social sciences on religion and nature: http://www.religionandnature.com/ern/sample/Proctor+Berry--SocialScienceRN.pdf
─┤article about framing language to discuss environmentalism for a Christian audience: http://www.hsutx.edu/academics/logsdon/smith/environ.html
I looked around for a while and, as bad as it is, environmentalism seemed to be the area with the greatest potential for conservative and liberal to work together. If anyone else can find anything, I'd please describe your search strategy as well as your findings. (I found two likely articles, but my American Anthropologist Association subscription ran out and I can't get to them. Dammit. Gotta get back on that.)
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MY TURN TO PREACH
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I've now been exposed to enough moralistic preaching here that I feel the need to look for a few “Amen!”s myself... Or maybe “Hell, yeah!” would be more appropriate.
If you don't want to read about something that is only vaguely related to framing Progressive ideas and communication, stop here. It's still about framing language, but it has little to do with Progressive ideas and communication.
Muder2006 says
■ “I think the reason Consumer Hedonism looks different from other religions is that it's the dominant religion of our society. The dominant religion always looks different.”
I'm an atheist. I also believe in taking my facts from books, so I think that the dominant religion—not philosophy—in the USA is Christianity (76.5% [adults 18+ only] http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#religions ) and the “religious” and “somewhat religious” population of the USA is about 75% ([adults 18+ only] http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm “Exhibit 3”). To me, the difference in religion and philosophy is clear (I whittled 'em down to what I believe most would think are the meaty parts in this context):
re·li·gion [ri-lij-uhn]–noun
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
[Origin: 1150–1200; ME religioun (< OF religion) < L religiōn- (s. of religiō) conscientiousness, piety, equiv. to relig(āre) to tie, fasten (re- re- + ligāre to bind, tie; cf. ligament) + -iōn- -ion; cf. rely]
religion. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion (accessed: January 03, 2007).
phi·los·o·phy [fi-los-uh-fee] –noun, plural -phies.
1. the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.
5. a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs.
[Origin: 1250–1300; ME philosophie < L philosophia < Gk philosophía. See philo-, -sophy]
philosophy. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/philosophy (accessed: January 03, 2007).
Both of them can have something to do with “affairs”, I'll grant you, but one of them is about “practical” and the other flat isn't. I would be willing to stipulate that Christianity could be a philosophy if you wanted to push me on it, but if you do, you're going to have to deal with the fact that it makes about 95% (wild-assed guess) of the 76.5% hypocrites. Even Muder2006 says that the majority of Christians don't have a Christian philosophy, or that they don't have a Christian religion, or something like that... He says
■ “Except for the Amish and a few other closed communities, every child in America is raised Consumer Hedonist. Most of us still practice it.”
So, whether Consumerist Hedonism is a religion or a philosophy, “most” of us [Muder and his audience] have it. In that case, they are not really hypocrites, they are just spending their time in a church instead of the mall where their religion would rightly take them. Hmm. Wait a second. If Consumer Hedonism is a philosophy and Unitarian/Universalist is a religion, then they could be in the right place after all. Was he being metaphorical with the Consumerist Hedonism stuff?
■ “I understand that it's hard to take this argument seriously. I seem to be talking about some kind of consumer hedonism, and surely it's just a metaphor to call that a religion.”
■ “Some religions may need a theory of God or the afterlife to make sense out of their answers, but Consumer Hedonism doesn't. That doesn't mean it's not a religion.”
■ «Here's a test. It's a take-home test, self-graded. Psalm 38 says, “In thee, O Lord, is my hope.” Where is your hope? When you daydream about a better life, what specifically are you hoping for?
■ Better things like a house or car?
■ Physical satisfaction like food or sex?
■ Something to improve your image, like a big promotion or a diet that really works?
■ Or maybe you think about money, which stands in for all three? Some people hope in the Lord. Some people hope in the Lottery.
■ Whatever your hope is, wherever you look for a better life, that's the religion that is real to you, the one you're counting on to save you from misery. And not until you become disillusioned with that religion will you have any deeper spiritual awakening.»
Can I stop now? I think he has made it clear that he's saying that he really thinks it's a religion. Hasn't he?
I'm still an atheist no matter what he calls a religion, but I don't like him bad-mouthing philosophies by calling them religions, even one as sorry and pathetic as Materialism. It doesn't meet the criteria for a religion but it meets the criteria for a philosophy. If Muder2006 had mentioned any secret rites like rolling naked in piles of cash or putting videos of yourself on Youtube wearing your most expensive undergarments, maybe then I could have bought it. Or maybe a prayer to “Pater Dollar”...
Frankly, I don't understand why people worship invisible gods when I'm right here waiting, and I even have a discount tithe program!