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Consumerism and the Real Economy Preaching at a Mass last year, a homilist made the bold statement that the number one sin of our society is consumerism. Considering the individual and institutional violence of our time, the widespread prevarication by the lowly and the mighty, our crass indifference toward one another, consumerism seems hardly worth commenting on. After all, consumers generally carry out their consumerist activities with a clear conscience, even a sense of virtue. And more than one shopper has given testimony to the healing effect of a shopping spree, referring to it as “retail therapy.” Consuming has become so prominent an aspect of our daily lives that we encounter such outrageous expressions as students consuming education and patients consuming health care. Perhaps we will learn to speak of the faithful consuming religion. What life is all about, then, becomes quite clear: by faithfully buying and discarding (the two are linked as birth and death), we prepare ourselves for eternal happiness in the great shopping mall in the sky. What the homilist said is to the point; we are dealing here with idolatry. It has been said that the ideal product would be one which could be mass-produced and sold, which deteriorates immediately, is discarded and replaced by a new one, and to which the consumer becomes addicted. Is this insane? No, it is “good for the economy.” Hence the prevalence of disposable items of all kinds. It is even the fashion to have disposable people, particularly in “Third World” countries. An older generation will remember that consumerism was rarely spoken of some decades ago; what was railed against in the Catholic press and from the pulpit was “materialism.” Mostly, this was understood to mean that we value the things of the world too highly, giving insufficient regard to things of the spirit. So we would try to follow a path of ascetic renunciation, giving things up for Lent which were permissible enough, but somewhat tainted. The real spiritual heroes could learn to do without material comforts so that they could focus entirely on the spiritual. We are now beginning to understand that the problem of materialism is not that we value things of the world too much, but that we do not value them enough. Thomas Berry tells us that there are no objects in the universe, only subjects. The birds, the trees, the streams, and the rocks are not objects to be used, but subjects to be related to. We know enough to understand that people are not to be used for our own purposes, but must be encountered as subjects with human rights. We are now told that animals, plants, and all of nature also have rights which must be respected. Even manufactured objects (our computers, our cars, our eating utensils) are subjects to be cherished and respected, not used, abused, and discarded. Getting back to the economy, Hazel Henderson (Creating Alternative Futures) points out that the real economy is much more than what can be measured in dollars and what goes into the Gross National Product. According to her model, the total productive system of an industrial society is like a four-layer cake, where the top two layers (about half the total) are monetized and reflected in the GNP and the lower two are not. The top layer is the “private” sector, including production, employment, consumption, investment and savings. This layer rests on the “public” sector, including defense, state and local government, and public sector infrastructure (such as roads, maintenance, sewers, bridges, subways, and schools). The top two layers include such items as illegal transactions and tax dodging, about 15% of the total. It seems clear enough that this top half is a mixed bag. While it all helps increase the GNP and some of it is helpful and even necessary, some of it is highly destructive. Most obvious is war-making, which is considered economically a good thing, since it raises the GNP, but illness, car crashes and natural disasters, among others, do the same. Does it make sense that our worship of an ever-expanding GNP makes us regard pain and suffering as desirable “for the sake of the economy?” The top two layers rest on what may be called a “love economy,” which is not monetized or recorded, but nonetheless constitutes an enormous subsidy to the official economy. This third layer is the social cooperative love economy, which includes such things as sweat equity, do-it-yourself activity, bartering, community and familial structures, unpaid household and parenting work, volunteering, sharing, mutual aid, caring for elderly and sick, home-based production for home use, and subsistence agriculture. In contrast to the top half, none of this activity is harmful, all of it contributes to the human spirit beyond its material value, and, of course, none of it is recognized by being included in the GNP. The bottom layer is the most overlooked but the most essential of all. It is the contribution of mother nature without which all the rest would collapse and which therefore contributes an enormous subsidy to total production. It includes the entire natural resource base, including the natural recycling of all waste products and the absorption (within limits) of all forms of pollution. Here are also hidden the economists’ “externalities,” the acknowledged costs which are nonetheless not calculated into the total, things like toxic dumps. Let us think clearly. Let’s not be slaves to the mystique of growth and consumption. Let’s pay attention to all parts of the economy, and if we want to calculate profits, let’s factor in the contributions of the natural and cooperative economies. Maybe if we had a different balance sheet, we would make different choices. Some corporations are already moving in the right direction, making use of what has become known as the “triple bottom line.” Corporations which want to be known as good citizens are having their performance judged not only by the dollar-profit bottom line but also by two other indicators, one related to their impact on employees and the community and another to their impact on the environment. A number of scholars are working on developing quantitative indicators of performance in these latter two areas, and companies are beginning to see a good triple bottom line as simply good business. It’s a hopeful trend for the future. But we can go far beyond that. Let’s pay attention to quality of life beyond economic well-being. Let’s learn to recognize and appreciate the love offerings of the cooperative economy whenever we have a meal or see a smile. Let’s regard nature as our benevolent friend and treat her decently. Let’s hug a tree. Let’s expand our spirit. Dom Roberti |