Interesting Project.

[catlover]

A little background: I am an older chicky who decided to wait until the kids were a little older to finish college.

Anyhow, I am participating in a writing class and one project was on consumerism. Part of the assignment was to write down everything you own and catagorize it according to:need, want, excess, luxury.

It was an eye opener, I pride myself on being frugile.

After looking at the list and catagorizing the list,I realize I am not that frugile.

Anyhow, I thought some of you folks maybe interested in doing the same type of project because you stress simple living.

 

[MrJim]

Sounds scary...I may find all my needs fit in the trunk of a car...

 

[catlover]

Sounds scary...I may find all my needs fit in the trunk of a car...

The thing that really bothered me, is how wasteful I am and how I don't take advantage of what I, already, have....

 

[Danfrey]

Sounds scary...I may find all my needs fit in the trunk of a car...

My family had the opportunity to discover just that very thing. About 3 years ago we moved to a new town and were camping at a local camp ground while we looked for work and housing. While we were away from camp one day everything we owned except the cloths we had in the car was stolen. We spent the next 3 weeks living out of our car while we tried to get back on our feet. Often times we weren't sure where our next meal would come from or where we would park the car to sleep without being harassed. It was a real eye opener of what our needs are.

Of course, those lessons were quickly forgotten as we got moved into an apartment and started furnishing it with our entertainment "Needs".

 

[catlover]

My family had the opportunity to discover just that very thing. About 3 years ago we moved to a new town and were camping at a local camp ground while we looked for work and housing. While we were away from camp one day everything we owned except the cloths we had in the car was stolen. We spent the next 3 weeks living out of our car while we tried to get back on our feet. Often times we weren't sure where our next meal would come from or where we would park the car to sleep without being harassed. It was a real eye opener of what our needs are.

Of course, those lessons were quickly forgotten as we got moved into an apartment and started furnishing it with our entertainment "Needs".

Consumerism gets all of us, even when we try to live simply~ What I like about Anabaptists, you folks try to fight it!

 

[MrJim]

They talk about how our society is dependent upon consumerism. We gotta buy buy buy. I spend money every day, even if it's just a cup of coffee. But this can't be what we were created for? Just to consume? And what of a society based upon consumption?

<<Academic will be by soon, I can just smell it>>

 

[ACADEMIC]

Good nose, Menno.

I'm glad you are in college, catlover. Being an older college student has its challenges but it rocks! Let's discuss that in a thread sometime over in College/Bible College!

Another reason I identify with anabaptists is over this issue of living levels.

All of my needs beyond housing and transportation can be carried within one trunk and one laptop bag (yes, to be me I really do need a computer ) .

All of my entire family's needs beyond housing and transportation can be carried within 8 trunks. 1 of those trunks is our bedding and another is books.

It grieves me to see other missionaries importing and exporting shipping crates full of lifestyles overseas, when Christ calls us to live incarnationally.

I have seen, smelled, lived in, and weeped with a lot of pain over poverty in the world.

Stemming from this, it has been a source of long-term pain for me to view the consumerism and levels of consumption that so many North American Christians live within, and then compare that with what I have known overseas.

I am actually very uncomfortable living in North America. It pains me greatly. I do not feel right, nor do I feel at home, really. I live with reverse culture shock whenever I am here. I live with a deep sense of being out of place.

I am even more uncomfortable in most North American churches. Wealth is good and it is needed, but it is the spending habits and buildings that have pained me beyond words. Do they realize what the money they spent on that new gym could have done?!?!

A book in my top 5 is Richard Foster's Freedom of Simplicity. I think every Western Christian on the planet should read it.

I already had the mindset and lived the way Foster described when I read it. But what it did for me is let me know I was not alone in how I felt; that I was not so crazy after all; and that my feelings over all those cruel words I heard from complacent Christians justifying their high living levels were on track after all.

"Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little." 2 Co 8:13-15

The evils of consumerism, and its larger system hegemonic capitalism, is one reason why we need alternative comunities, plus people who work to change things at the systems level where mindsets and worldviews are produced and reproduced within people via Satanic strategies to steal, kill, and destroy.

 

[MrJim]

Does "capitalism" have to be based on consumerism? Are these two inseparable?

 

[ACADEMIC]

That's how it works, Menno.

 

[MrJim]

That's how it works, Menno.

Don't guess there is anything inherently evil about it-it just seems to breed greed...guess the alternatives aren't much to consider anyhow.

 

[ACADEMIC]

"....the alternatives aren't much to consider anyhow."

That is part of the lie that those who benefit from injustice would like us to believe. The fact is there are some specifically top-down alternatives that are not much to consider. It is false to say there are no superior alternatives to capitalism, even if only because we have not tried all alternatives to capitaism.

I am convinced there are minority political economies that are exceedingly superior to capitalism, and that they more mirror examples of political economies practiced by the faithful within Scripture.

There are alternative political economies that have existed, do exist today, and can be lived out within minority alternative communities today. These can then be held up as an example to larger society and mirrored on larger scales.

There is a Mennonite author in Wealth and Poverty: Four Christian Views of Economics named Art Gish that makes a very strong case for what I am describing. His leaning is what he calls "decentralist economics". Incidentally, he is arguing against Gary North in the book. Never have I read North at more of a loss for words than he is in his rebuttal to Gish.

You can view how an indigenous alternative political economy in Haiti works starting on PDF page 49 (page 32 of the actual document) here.

There are also very facinating books from non-Christians on participatory economics. One author is Michael Albert.

 

[MrJim]

I would think something like that could work in the US, though it would be more of a sub-economy. It would work in a communal/collective group, probably some forms of it already around. The "primitive" vs. "modern" model is interesting, but something would really seriously have to happen in the US for it to return to the primitive model, don't you think? Maybe something catastrophic?

 

[ACADEMIC]

Well, we don't have to accept Durkheim's "primitive"/ "modern" categories on their face.

Durkheim believed in unilineal evolution, which meant that he applied concepts of evolutionary biology to human social life. He saw societies as "naturally" "evolving" from "lower" to "higher" social orders, although "higher" orders could help "lower" ones evolve.

While his descriptions are useful, I reject his underlying philosophical assumptions, obviously.

What he calls a "primitve" social solidarity form may well be much more "advanced", i.e., more inherently capable of being a just system.

I think we can agree that people throughly socialized into capitalism, such that it becomes an inherent part of their worldview, can exhibit some very sinful behavior. I think if people are socialized into more just social orders then those same orders place greater delimiters on sinful behavior through inherent sets of rules and taboos stemming from inherent values. That equates to more just social orders.

I think our job is to model those and then work to see them spread.

So He was saying, "What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it? "It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and threw into his own garden; and it grew and became a tree, and THE BIRDS OF THE AIR NESTED IN ITS BRANCHES." And again He said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? "It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened." Luke 13:18-21

And yes, I think that after people undergo hardship from a system, they begin looking for alternatives to the system - thanks be to God!

 

[catlover]

13-15

The evils of consumerism, and its larger system hegemonic capitalism, is one reason why we need alternative comunities, plus people who work to change things at the systems level where mindsets and worldviews are produced and reproduced within people via Satanic strategies to steal, kill, and destroy.

It is true...stealing, killing will only be seen as an "innovation" in order to get what one wants.

You more than likely know a theory known as "Anomie/Strain" as our society becomes more "organic", rather than "basic" our drive for things causes people to act and behave in ways that are deviant.

Menno, the best way to combat it, is to be aware of how large corporations, through marketers and mass media, manipulate us and our children.

 

[ACADEMIC]

I stated earlier,

The evils of consumerism, and its larger system hegemonic capitalism, is one reason why we need alternative comunities, plus people who work to change things at the systems level where mindsets and worldviews are produced and reproduced within people via Satanic strategies to steal, kill, and destroy.

It is true...stealing, killing will only be seen as an "innovation" in order to get what one wants.

I want to make sure I am clear.

At the systems level, in the creation and maintenance of systems in the world, Satan himself is most at work to steal, kill, and destroy.

Satan creates and works to maintain such systems as will result in his own ability to massively steal, kill, and destroy from all of God's creation, foremost from mankind in whom is God's image.

This is not to say that Satanic activity does not occur on a one-on-one basis, as in a demon or demons who attack individual Christians or movements. It is to say that, in truth, that is a secondary Satanic activity. Satan wants to control the world, and he most does that by creating systems that best enable that to occur.

This is why John says clearly "do not love the world". The word John uses is cosmos in Greek, which is best translated world system. John was saying not to love the world system, Satan's dominant realm of activity.

When Paul urged the Romans, "Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds," he was recognizing that minds by default are formed by reason of a person being on earth and carrying out their days in rub with Satanic world systems; that all have had their minds molded, their wordviews formed, by that system.

However, when our minds are renewed, we can view all things from a new mind, a new worldview, and live within the world with a different set of eyes resulting from our renewed minds.

Yet some Christian conceptions of "not being worldy" have Satanic fingerprints all over them. He just loves to keep us blind to his global and systems-level strategies to steal, kill, and destroy. So Satan deceives as many Christians as he can under false notions of what is "worldliness", so he can marginalize them away from the domains wherein he is actually carrying out his strategies and tactics. Defeatist eschatologies also come into play here.

But we are not to be ignorant of Satan's wiles. We are to be kingdom-minded through-and-through. We are to go into all the world and make disciples of the nations. We are to think from the mind of Christ while going out into "the world" to make onslaughts against Satan where he is most at work and has his seats of authority.

 

[MrJim]

Menno, the best way to combat it, is to be aware of how large corporations, through marketers and mass media, manipulate us and our children.

Hey it's a lot easier when the plug is pulled on the TV--ain't seen a TV commercial in 6 months

 

[catlover]

Hey it's a lot easier when the plug is pulled on the TV--ain't seen a TV commercial in 6 months

Isn't it weird to see a commercial after not seeing one for a long time?

 

[MrJim]

Isn't it weird to see a commercial after not seeing one for a long time?

Yeah, what finally got me to pull the plug was the crass focus on kids, guess I thought maybe I could teach them to be above it HA I'm not even above it.

Nice to be disconnected. A lot of the programs were pretty good, just couldn't get past the commercials between them.

 

[ACADEMIC]

We have gone for as much as two years without televion.

As for commercials, I have found it equally satisfying to use them to teach my kids exactly how advertizers are making consumerist assumptions from a consumerist worldview about people who they are seeking to manipulate for their own ends. And my kids do "get it"!

I taught Consumer Economics one year and had a blast facilitating my students, young adults. I first taught them about various propoganda techniques, and then their job was to bring in ads they collected and describe to the class how the advertizer was using the propoganda techniques to manipulate. It was blast to see them view these things with completely new eyes.

 

[MrJim]

no no no it's "marketing" not "propaganda"