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The religion of consumption

by Frei Betto

The Financial Times reports from London that Young & Rubicam, one of the world's biggest advertising agencies, has published a list of the 10 brand names most recognized by 45,444 youth and adults in 19 countries. They are: Coca-Cola (35 million units sold every hour), Disney, Nike, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes Benz, Adidas, Rolls-Royce, Calvin Klein and Rolex.

"Trademarks are a new religion. People seek them in a search for meaning," a Young & Rubicam director said. He went on to say that these trademarks "possess the passion and dynamism necessary to transform the world and convert people to their way of thinking."

Fitch, the London design consultant, last year recognized the "divine" character of these famous brands, noting that on Sundays, people prefer shopping to mass or worship. To support this thesis, the company mentioned two examples: since 1991, about 12,000 people have been married in Disney theme parks; and Harley brand coffins, in which bikers enamored of Harley Davidson motorcycles are interred, are becoming fashionable.

The thesis does not lack logic. Marx denounced fetishes over merchandise. Shortly after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, it was discovered that people don't just want necessities. If they have acquisitive power, they ostentatiously worship the superfluous. Thus advertising came along to help turn the superfluous into the necessary.

Merchandise, which was the intermediary in relations among human beings (person-merchandise-person) came to occupy both ends (merchandise-person-merchandise). If I arrive at a friend's house in a bus, my value is less than one who arrives in a BMW. The same goes for the shirt I wear or the watch on my wrist. It's not me, the human being, who makes use of an object. It's the product, dressed up as a fetish, that tags me with a value, increasing my price in the social relations market. It's as if some neo-liberal Descartes proclaimed: "I consume, therefore I am." Outside the market there is no salvation, warn the new priests of the consumerist idolatry.

This appropriation of the religious by the market is evident in the shopping center, as has been so well criticized by José Saramango in his "La Caverna." Almost all of them have architectonic lines in the style of cathedrals. They are temples of the market god. In some, you don't enter in just any garb ——— something like Sunday best clothing is required. You walk through their imitation marble cloisters to those post-modern Gregorian sounds, something akin to dentist's office muzak. There, everything evokes heaven: no beggars or street kids, poverty or misery. With a devoted gaze, the consumer contemplates the chapels which show off, in sumptuous niches, the venerable objects of consumption, surrounded by pretty priestesses. Those who can pay the bill feel like they're in heaven; those buying on credit, in purgatory; those without resources, in hell. Upon leaving, however, all come together in brotherhood at the "eucharist" table of McDonald's.

Illusions

Young & Rubicam compared the ad agencies with the missionaries who spread religions like Christianity or Islam around the world. "The religions based themselves on powerful ideas that gave live significance and goals," the director of the English agency said.

Faith imprints a subjective sense upon life, making the practice of love the objective, whereas a product creates the illusory sensation that, thanks to it, we are more valuable in the eyes of others. Consumerism is an illness of low self-esteem. A St. Francis of Assisi or a Gandhi didn’t need any such artifice to bring esteem to himself, or to spread it among others or direct it toward God.

The original sin of this new "religion" is that, contrary to the traditions, it's not altruistic but egotistical; it doesn't favor solidarity, but competition; it doesn't make life, but possessions, the real gift. Worse yet, it makes it seem as if heaven is on earth, and then leaves the consumer facing eternity completely devoid of the goods accumulated on this side of life.

The critique of materialistic fetishes dates from some eight centuries before Christ, according to the Book of Isaiah:

The carpenter stretches a line, he marks it out with a pencil; he fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars; or he chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest; he plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man; he takes a part of it and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread; also he makes a god and worships it, he makes a graven image and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over the half he eats flesh, he roasts meat and is satisfied; also he warms himself and says, "Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire." And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol; and falls down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says. "Deliver me, for thou art my god!" (Isaiah 44, 13-17).

Neither does the consumption of religion escape from the religion of consumption, presented as a miracle cure, capable of alleviating pain and anguish and guaranteeing prosperity and happiness. But meanwhile, He was hungry and you gave Him no food (see Matthew 25, 31-40).