I Am What I Shop?

Am I more alive only according to the car I drive? Is my soul determined by the shoes I choose? Am I one of the elect by the coffee I select? Will I go to heaven if I shop at the 7-11? Shall I be held in awe by the shopping mall? Can I prove I exist by my shopping list?

GREENVILLE (Catholic Online) - Traveling home from a speaking engagement I couldn´t help noticing an advertisement on the wall of the transit train. A sultry female gazed at the camera clutching a luxurious handbag overflowing with designer goods. The headline declared, "I Am What I Shop". I had to look twice to make sure I had perceived correctly. Then as I walked along the concourse there were three more ads like some solemn sacrilegious Sanctus: Once, Twice, Three times the lady proclaimed her creed. "I Am What I Shop" made my jaw drop. Have we come to this, that we define the essence of our being by the latest essence we have purchased from the perfumery? Am I more alive only according to the car I drive? Is my soul determined by the shoes I choose? Am I one of the elect by the coffee I select? Will I go to heaven if I shop at the 7-11? Shall I be held in awe by the shopping mall? Can I prove I exist by my shopping list? Of course there is a sense in which my shopping reveals who I am. My car, my clothes, my house and my credit card bill conceal a wealth of information about my tastes, my education, my purchasing habits and therefore my values. Apparently the ubiquitous ´loyalty card´ has very little to do with rewarding customers for loyalty with little discounts, and everything to do with the computerized tracking of our spending habits; with all this juicy information being funneled to the marketing geniuses who devise everlastingly novel ways to get us to spend, spend, spend. But while it is true that what I buy may reveal what I am like, it does not reveal who I am, for I am more than what I buy. Beneath the clever advertising headline runs a sickening misapprehension of the human person and his possessions. There is a sad assumption beneath the consumerist clichè, and is the realization that in our society we love things and use people rather than loving people and using things. In other words, we too often determine a person´s worth by his financial worth. We do indeed judge people by the clothes they wear, the neighborhood they live in and the car they drive. Can it be true that we are so shallow? What, have I no more substance than the model on the billboard? Am I as paper thin and photo-shopped as she is? The advertiser might well have delved deeply into philosophy proper and expanded his mini creed by saying not, "I am What I Shop" but "I Shop Therefore I Am". Now we are getting into a real analysis of the superficiality of the consumer culture. How many poor lost souls actually do follow this form of idolatry and define their own existence not by who they are but what they have? How many "Shop to Live and Live to Shop"? How many really do worship at Wall Street; bow to the buck, and have no other god but the greenback? In the face of such grotesque greed and conscious consumption it would be easy to retreat into a kind of anti-consumerist primitivism. We might come to regard all this materialist mess as beneath us, and begin to shun the physical as sinful. Instead of money changers we could become Manichees--instead of aesthetes we could become ascetics. But this will not do either. God has created the physical world for our pleasure and health and to be the channel that draws us to himself. A guideline for the consumer, therefore is the wisdom of the poet Thomas Traherne who wrote, "Can a man be just unless he love all things according to their worth?" To properly appreciate the physical things in our world we ought, therefore, to first assess their true worth. What, for example, is the worth of a car? It is not a trophy or a glamorous extension of our personality. It is a machine designed to take us and our passengers and cargo from point A to point B in safety, efficiency and ease. There is nothing wrong if it´s appointments increase our pleasure and comfort nor is there sin in the admiration of a fine design and a beautiful intent, but in assessing a thing´s true worth we will be able to love it according to that worth: no greater and no less. As Lent approaches and as belts tighten and recession bites all of us are well served to reconsider our consumerist temptations and re-affirm that our being is rooted not in the Mall, but in Him who is in All and Through All, Him who is our Being and Our All.

----- Fr Dwight Longenecker is the Chaplain of St Joseph´s Catholic School in Greenville, South Carolina. He blogs at Standing on My Head. Check out his Screwtape Letters-type Lent book, Gargoyle Code at his website: www.dwightlongenecker.com

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