healing our brokenness inadequately (part 5): american, consumer addiction and pessimism

“…The heart of the sons of men
is full of evil,
and madness is in their heart
while they live…”
(Ecclesiastes 9.3)
 
Wherewith shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before the high God?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the LORD require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
 (Micah 6.6, 8)
​

​healing our brokenness inadequately (part 5): american, consumer addiction and pessimism
​

“They heal my people’s brokenness inadequately, announcing:
   “It’s OK! It’s OK!”
      But nothing is OK! (Jeremiah 6.14, author’s translation).
​

  introduction

In his famous soliloquy and song, “If I Were a Rich Man,” Tevye dreams of a “big, tall house with rooms by the dozen,” with a “fine tin roof with real wooden floors.” Outside the house, he dreams of a “yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks.” He dreams of a wife with plenty to eat and “a proper double-chin.” As for himself, Tevye dreams of having “the time that I lack to sit in the synagogue and pray… discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day” To him, “that would be the sweetest thing of all.”
 
We all have dreams. Even at nearly 70, I still do. One of my dreams involves Hebrew prophets. I wish they would come back; return in a renaissance of prophetic discernment and courage. Prophets like Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and Isaiah. Today’s religious leaders—whether the go by prophet, priest, or pastor—seem not up to the task, lacking both discernment and courage. They seem utterly blind and mute to sin, unless it involves human genitalia.
 
This Mad State post is the third in an ongoing series entitled, “Healing Our Brokenness Inadequately” The title takes its cue from Jeremiah 6.14 in which the prophet laments the ineffectual and specious ministry of Judah’s prophets. In this series, we explore specific examples of individual and societal sins about which religious leaders remain willfully blind or, if sighted, stubbornly mute… and therefore complicit. With these examples in mind, we will imagine what a Hebrew prophet might have to say if he were to come to us from the past. Here, then, is our third example.
 


  pessimistic consumption

Recent weeks have seen a number of headlines such as the following.
 
“Us Consumer Confidence Fell Again in October”[1]
 
“Consumers Remain Pessimistic About the Future—Even as They Continued to Spend”[2]
 
“Us consumers keep spending despite high prices and their own gloomy outlook. Can it last?”[3]
 
“Why Americans feel gloomy about the economy despite falling inflation and low unemployment”[4]
 
“Black Friday shoppers spent a record $9.8 billion in U.S. online sales, up 7.5% from last year”[5]
 
“Cyber Monday rings in 12.4 billion in sales as consumers hunt for bargains”[6]
 
The American public—they are called “consumers,” for good reason, rather than, say, “citizens,” by those who prey on their insatiable appetite for more, more, more—are “pessimistic,” have low “confidence” in the economy and the future, “feel gloomy,” and possess a “gloomy outlook.” The Consumer Confidence Index is down. The Present Situation Index is in decline, still.
 
But, spending is up! UP. UP. In two 24-hour periods, Friday, November 24 and Monday, November 27, 2023, Americans, or consumers, spent $22.2 billion. Purportedly, spending during these two days was in no small part credited to consumers looking for bargains. But, of course, the percentage of those purchasing on credit is way up—higher interest rates wiping out the meager savings from sale prices. As the Christmas Season continues and the year ebbs away, spending trends show no signs of letting up even as pessimism persists.
 
With the inflation rate at the lowest point in two and one-half years, unemployment below 4% for the longest stretch since the 1960s, new hiring up, many wages up, and consumers spending like there’s no tomorrow, economist are befuddled by the pessimistic surveys and the rabid spending habits of American consumers. The two seem irrationally contradictory.
 
The befuddlement is somewhat comical. For, as the name implies, Americans have become by nature “consumers.” Probably, their consumption is to be credited as much to habit as to any other factor, such as sale prices. Indeed, their habit of consumption looks very much like an addiction—out of control and irrational.
 
 

  consuming addiction

We have all heard, by now, that the brain has a “pleasure center”—the “nucleus accumbens” it is called. This “reward circuit” lets us know when something is enjoyable and reinforces the desire for us to perform the same pleasurable action again, and again, and again. We all also know, by now, that a brain stimulated by pornography releases pleasure-giving endorphins and dopamine. Individuals often become addicted to the euphoria that this chemical cocktail produces, irresistibly coming back to pornographic over, and over, and over again. We know, too, that similar processes are at work with the use of drugs—street or prescription—and drug addiction.
 
Modern research suggests that the brain releases the same euphoric chemical cocktail in our brain’s “pleasure center” during shopping, purchasing, acquiring, accumulating, and consuming that it does in drinking,  gambling, taking drugs, and viewing pornography for pornography or substance abuse. The neurotransmitter, dopamine, surges when we even consider buying something new.
 
Our American society, with its consumer economy, is, increasingly, built upon consumerism—as even those who see no harm, but only virtue in such an economy, admit. The economy, which has become, essentially, an idolatrous god, goes up and down, depending upon how diligently we obey materialistic laws and impulses to acquire. Watching our society’s enthusiastic struggle to acquire, we might be forgiven for wondering whether our entire society and many of us, its citizenry, are, in fact, addicted to the principle of acquiring, victims of euphoria producing and addictive endorphins and dopamine. We see nothing in it unhealthy, don’t recognize it as an addiction, because we are all in the same doped up state, addicted to the same drug. If we are all addicted, then it must not be addiction.
 
Such unwillingness to admit that we have a problem is, of course, typical. The addict always thinks they have things under control. But, once in a while, there is a moment of unusual honesty.
 
“How can you say,
   ‘I am not defiled;
       I have not run after the Baals’?
See how you behaved in the valley;
    consider what you have done.
You are a swift she-camel
    running here and there,
a wild donkey accustomed to the desert,
    sniffing the wind in her craving--
       in her heat who can restrain her?
Any males that pursue her need not tire themselves;
    at mating time they will find her.
Do not run until your feet are bare
    and your throat is dry.
But you said,
   ‘It’s no use!
 I love foreign gods,
    and I must go after them’” (Jer. 2.23-25, NIV).
 
Yes, the inconsistent and befuddling behavior of the American consumer can reasonably be chalked up to addiction. We are a culture of shopping addicts. And just as with any addiction, it takes more and more of the stimulant to maintain the desired highs. Dissatisfaction with the current fix and the need and demand for even more stimulation are inevitable. Hence, one reason the American consumer’s gloomy outlook and pessimistic perspective in the face of bounty that surpasses anything human society has ever seen.
 
 

  all things are become slippery

As I hear and read of consumers’ pessimistic grumblings about the economy, my mind naturally turns to the Book of Mormon and the consumers of Helaman 13. I have discussed these consumers and their consumption in detail elsewhere.[7] But, here, I liken their experiences and feelings to those of the American consumer.
 
Samuel the Lamanite foresees, or “forehears” the consumers of his day. He hears them “weep and howl.” He hears them “lament” that their “riches… have become slippery” and “are gone from us.”  “Behold,” they lament, “we lay a tool here and on the morrow it is gone; and behold, our swords are taken from us in the day we have sought them for battle. Yea, we have hid up our treasures and they have slipped away from us, because of the curse of the land.”
 
One hears in the American consumer’s pessimism an echo of this ancient and sad refrain,
 
“All things are become slippery, and we cannot hold them.”[8]
 
Samuel informs them of the real reason for the unhappiness and pessimism.
 
“Ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head” (Hel. 13.38).
 
 

  conclusion

So it is with the American consumer. The consumption, having become in many cases a sinful addiction, cannot produce happiness—indeed, the consumption itself, with its deleterious impacts on the environment and the world’s poor, is sinful and bound to bring unhappiness through natural disasters, the devaluing and dehumanization of others, and human conflict. Anytime the consumer’s consumptive and consuming addiction is in anyway hampered, slowed, or reduced pessimism quite naturally ensues. It feels like things are slipping away from us.
 
Prophets, priests, and pastors have been asleep at the switch when it comes to addressing this most pervasive addiction in human history. They have no hesitation in screaming bloody murder about a few hundreds of thousands that might be addicted to pornography or a handful of substances, but they remain strangely silent about an addiction that afflicts billions of the globes’ inhabitants—an addiction that creates far, far more suffering than all the other addictions combined. Do they not see the addiction and its harmful effects on society? Or are they, perhaps, themselves caught up in the addiction to one degree or another?
 
“His watchmen are blind:   
   they are all ignorant,  
they are all dumb dogs,   
   they cannot bark;  
sleeping, lying down,   
   loving to slumber.
Yea, they are greedy dogs   
   which can never have enough,  
and they are shepherds that cannot understand:   
   they all look to their own way,    
      every one for his gain, from his quarter” (Is. 56.10-11).
 
 These recalcitrant and silent modern prophets, priests, and pastors could learn a thing or two from the Hebrew prophets about the evils of idolatrous consumption and how to address it. Here, is a sampling.
 
“You are they who lie upon ivory divans,
   sprawl out on your settees,
eat lambs from flocks,
   and specially fed calves,
pluck on the harp
   as Dāwid, invent for themselves musical instruments,
drink wine by the bowl full,
   apply the best of perfumes,
      while remaining unaffected by the nation’s collapse” (Amos 6.4-6, author’s translation).   
 
“That saith,
   ‘I will build me a wide house
      and large chambers,’
 
And cutteth him out windows;
   and it is cieled with cedar,
      and painted with vermilion” (Jer. 22.14).
 
“I will tear down the winter house
    along with the summer house;
the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed
    and the mansions will be demolished,”
      declares the Lord.” (Amos 3.15)
 
We could use such voices. No, they would not be welcome any more than Samuel the Lamanite was. But the call is clear, and the need is great. Warnings about the addictive nature of consumerism could squelch a host of accompanying evils. Warnings about the addictive nature of consumerism could bring happiness, true happiness that far surpasses all the transitory dopamine highs that money and its purchasing power can buy.
 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!


[1] The Conference Board
[2] The Conference Board
[3] Christopher Rugaber and Anne D’Innocenzio, Associated Press
[4] Christopher Rugaber, Associated Press
[5] Rebecca Picciotto, CNBC
[6] Brooke DiPalma, Yahoo
[7] See my homily on Helaman 13, entitled, “Society’s Slippery Slope” in the archive found on our Homilies and Just Society pages of this site.
[8] See Helaman 13.32-37.