So what have we come to as a nation? My wife and I were at San Tan Village the other night, we were just window shopping. As we went in and out of some of the stores we were amazed at how expensive some things cost. There were 3 sunglasses shops within a stones throw of each other, and not only sunglasses, but expensive pairs of sunglasses. We couldn’t help but suspect that some of the stores will be going out of business soon. Think about Circuit City closing all of their Arizona stores, that seems crazy.
What have we come to? I will be the first to admit that I have fallen victim to the “American Dream” that more is better & bigger is better. We look to always show people how important we are with our clothes, cars, and houses. I am hopeful that the economy recovers soon, but I am really hoping that this little economy shake-up will realign our values.
The part that scares me the most is that we have handed down these values to our kids and young people. This is scary because we now have a generation of people that believe the lies of consumerism and materialism. Let’s be a generation of change.
I have to make some changes in my life to live a life of moderation. Liz and I are going to try and rearrange our values and practices around these ideas.
What are yourthoughts on the economy? Materialism and Consumerism? The American Dream?
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November 15, 2008 at 12:10 am
Joel
I’m somewhat excited to see what the economic crisis does for the American paradigm of consumerism. Crisis forces creativity and reevaluation. It creates an opportunity to see that owning a lot of cool stuff doesn’t bring meaning to our lives.
I’m also stoked to be in youth ministry and point out that the values of the kingdom–loving one’s neighbor, seeking justice for the poor and oppressed, valuing community, etc.–trump the values of consumerism–competing with one’s neighbor, seeking tax breaks for the rich, valuing individualism, etc. If a young person captures that kingdom vision and runs with it, I’m convinced that they can literally change the world.
November 15, 2008 at 2:38 am
joshbarton21
Word!
I agree with you on all of this. I am very hopeful that the economic crisis helps us in a way to view consumerism with a different lens. I think that creativity is going to be one of the greatest tools that we are going to have to learn and enforce in ministry and life.
You have the right mindset for youth ministry too. I love to hear youth pastors that see the potential in crisis and tough situations. We are just lucky enough to be a part of the process of being role models and leaders to the next generation.
November 15, 2008 at 8:30 am
robina
Alas, another benefit of my poor status – it’s reworking my mind to not “need” the stuff I used to crave. I do agree that this accurately-predicted crisis we’re having is having some interesting side effects that I think we’ll benefit our country in the long run. For over 20 years, we’ve been about consumerism and spendspendspend. Perhaps, it is time for things to change.
On a contradictory sidenote, however – stimulus checks must be spent the next time around. I’m guilty myself of not properly utilizing it the first time (I put all $600 on my American Express – billz), which is a big part of why it didn’t do much for the economy.
(this is a very choppy response, but my brain is fried.)
November 15, 2008 at 10:29 pm
tom
hey Josh. I really think that you would benefit from living how Malora and I lived for the past year. Not shopping has changed us forever and I do not think we will ever be the consumers we once were.
When you take yourself out of the race to acquire more stuff and live a life of sustainability and conscientious consumerism you can not go back to your old ways. The biggest thing we learned is that everything we buy either has a positive or negative global impact.
Because of this fact we are going to strive to buy everything we can local, organic, fair trade, or Union made. It is important to send a message with each of the purchases we make.
November 16, 2008 at 9:09 am
The Simple Life « Takin’ it all in
[...] I’m inspired to write this due to my brother’s post on materialism and consumerism http://partofthejourney.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/shopping-in-america/. I couldn’t agree more that we as a country and a world have fallen victim to “Bigger [...]