Consumerism – the stupidest religion of all.

Posted on by Opher

We are taught to be good consumers. All the world is a smorgasbord from which we are brainwashed into participating. There is always some new wonder that we are convinced we need.

Be good consumers – support your economy.

Goods are manufactured and sold to us. The profits are reinvested in producing more goods. People go into debt to purchase things they do not need. Growth is the mantra – produce more goods, consume more.

Advertising cons you into needing it.

We buy too much food because our appetites are ignited by the advertising. Then we spend a fortune on health farms, health products and dieting products.

We buy beauty products, lotions, deodorants, anti-wrinkle cream, hair dye, make-up, and health products by the ton. It makes me wonder what people did a couple of hundred years ago when they didn’t have any of it. Most of it is snake-oil.

Everything has a built in obsolescence and needs replacing regularly. Nothing is built to last. Every trend creates a new irresistible need.

When I was young we had nothing much in the way of electrical goods. We did not have a phone. We had a radio, one black and white TV, a radiogram, and my Dansette record player. In the kitchen there was an oven, a fridge and a twintub washing machine.

My present house has a huge TV, four or five radios, DVD player, A hi-fi system, record deck, tape deck, a CD player, 5 computers, 3 freezers, 2 fridges, gas hobs, oven, microwave, dishwasher, washing machine, clothes dryer, food mixer, 3 landline phones, 2 mobiles, 2 cameras, and probably a lot of other stuff I can’t even remember without looking. It is all absolutely indispensable.

At school I used to get the kids to itemise their stuff. One kid said there were 10 TVs in the house including ones in all the bedrooms, the kitchen and bathroom. One kid had a dozen working cell phones shoved in a drawer. He was only fifteen. It seems that every Christmas and Birthday he got an upgrade because the old model didn’t take photos, or videos, or connect with the web, or wake him up in the morning. He had to had the latest one with the latest gimmick. Nowadays your phone can do the job of everything – music, photography, films, internet, recording – but you still need the rest of the stuff.

I resist a lot of the stupidities of consuming. But I do collect vinyl and CDS. I have done since I was a kid. It’s nuts. There is no end to the great music that I must have. More is issued every day. I now have many times more than I can possibly play.

The same goes for books. I have a vast library.

We have to have big houses to store and house the stuff we purchase.

They even sell us experiences when we have no more room for more stuff. They sell us storage to keep it in.

It is a sickness. It is called the religion of consumerism.

You can’t take it all with you when you die. But that doesn’t stop us.

We destroy the planet, use up the room, chop down the forests and claw out the natural resources to make things we really do not need, to satisfy the god of consumerism, to keep the profits flowing, so that some, a small minority, can live a life of luxury.

Heaven comes with your next essential purpose.

13 thoughts on “Consumerism – the stupidest religion of all.”

  1. Consumerism is horrible but I feel like we’re all addicted to it. We can’t live without all these material things and even though they’re sucking the life out of us!

  3. Sounds crazy! We have only one tv and one computer. Sure we have also smart phones (me and my man). We don’t have even dish machine but wash machine we do have. We manage well with these! Well, we don’t have children, but I still don’t get it. Who needs 10 tvs?! Somewhere people have no tvs, computers, phones or anything like that…

    1. Yes it is crazy. I asked the kid with the TVs and he said his mum liked to watch the soaps. Her favourite thing was to have a long bath and watch TV. She had a TV to watch while cooking and one in the breakfast room. It sounds like she was addicted.

      1. Oh that’s too bad! Who can live liike that? I assume you don’t have to be watching these series on the tv, on real time (like here in Finland). You can use net tv and watch your series when you have time!

      2. That’s true. We can now watch something when we want. Works for me. Hello to you in Finland! Welcome!

  4. Net TV isn’t very good picture quality once it gets bounced onto a large TV.
    I’ve always had a TV in my kitchen and bedroom, that’s a basic.
    People I know who hoard stuff and buy continuously such as loads of records and cds were quite poor when they were young and developed this condition.
    I should also point out that thankfully it isn’t every day that music is issued, but every Friday.
    I don’t hoard old computers as they are useless today. I bought a 2 terrabite memory, transferred what was on them and dumped them.

    What people did do a couple of hundred years ago was stink. They were stinky dirty and only those with means could wash properly. I’m not entirely sure about the claim that most beauty products are snake oil. Some might have been back when, but nowadays it is an extremely scientific business with very serious money invested into research. I would suggest the poster is completely out of the loop on this subject and had he watched BBC4’s documentary on hair products earlier tonight and seen what goes on in the research laboratories, he may not have cast aspertions.
    As a bloke I can’t believe I just said that but I know about it and an ex-wife was a country sales manager for Thalgo.
    Many cultures have been using lotions and potions for thousands of years and they really had it sussed.

  5. That’s the effect of advertising speaking for capitalism. You only buy, because they made you think, you want it. A solution could be resistance or create free alternatives, like open-source did.

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