What happens when we live in a world defined by consumerism?

We‘re meant for community and we flourish in community. Yet today’s world devalues community, diminishing those places where we can discover our sense of worth in deep social connection.

Living in the marketplace (shorthand for the consumer culture), we‘re viewed instead as sealed off and separate from one another, as if in saran premium plastic wrap, ignoring our interdependent and relational natures. We’re told to prosper on our own, away from others, leaving us without the life-enhancing resources of social consciousness and shared connection.

We’re taught to define our value using the measuring sticks of material net worth and earning potential. What we do for work and what we own at home matters most of all. Living life on these economic terms reduces our sense of self to how much we produce and how much we consume.

In the marketplace, everything is a commodity to be bought and sold. Everything has a price, yet nothing has value, because the marketplace turns everything into an object to be assimilated, used, and thrown away.

In this manufactured world, even our shared resources are sold off to the private sector in the name of profit for its own sake. Here, corporate rights are valued over our communal rights and individual rights.

In this marketplace, one believing in the power of economics above all else, everything is at risk. We can’t act quickly enough to save ourselves from the threats of global warming because the marketplace tells us short-term economic costs are simply too great.

All this stands in sharp contrast to far-less-dominant indigenous worldviews grounded in a commitment to connectedness and social responsibility.

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As this blog continues, we’ll explore how we find our way home to each other.