In my reading this week, I ran across an arresting statement.
"We have all the riches, all the wealth, but do we have human warmth? Just below our mesmerizing surface lies a psychic mix of anxiety, guilt and depression so heavy that it can no longer be relieved by another purchase."
It caused me to wonder how often we anesthetize ourselves by making another purchase. It makes me wonder if we pursue things instead of pursuing the One who makes all things.
If I understand it correctly, in a few weeks we will receive a payment that is part of the "economic stimulus plan" from the US government. What will we do with it? What will I do with it?
Make another purchase?
Move it into circulation for His Kingdom's sake?
Hide it under a bushel?
I am not sure...
Recently an organization created a simple commercial calling attention to our need to curb our consumption at all levels.
It was a power-point kind of commercial. Simple.
Three frames fading from one to another in a slow dissolve.
The first frame had the words....Feeling Empty?
The second frame had the words...Don't Worry
The last frame slowly emerged from the black screen with the words...Consumption will fill the void...
All of the major networks rejected the commercial.
Why?
I have a suspicion. What do you think?
2 comments:
greetings to all of you who read this blog...
Although i have only read a few of these blog entries, i have been reading from Griot's Corner blog for the past 22 years... i just finished a book called "pursuits of happiness" by jack greene. greene is attempting to find the formulation of an american culture.. if any of you are interested in finding out more about what america IS all about, i HIGHLY suggest that you read this book. greene focuses on how it was the Chesapeake region that established the prevailing american culture. the following is an excerpt that may help all of you who are newly delving into the realm of anti-consumerism. this is discussing the accumulation of wealth by the chesapeake elite during the century spanning 1660-1760 (chapter 4 pg 93)
"as they (chesapeake elitists) amassed more and more wealth, they pursued a lifestyle appropriate to an english rural gentry. they built new brick houses commanding the country side... they they employed more of their slaves in domestic service (my voice: to have others carry out the work at their benefit.) they filled their houses with luxury possessions, including imported carpets, silver plate, books, and other items that would help to confirm their own self conceptions and to identify them to others as people of status and wealth"... they assumed an almost total hegemony over civil and religious institutions at both the local and provincial levels ..."
the american culture is that of accumulating wealth... it IS the american dream... i'm not sure if anyone else remembers when Tsar bush addressed the nation as to what they could to aid the nation... SPEND, BUY, CONSUME. the last thing our nation needs is another technological apparatus that was made cheap over seas, and exorbitantly over-inflated for the american market...
22 years???
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