The demands of society

Can Morality survive in an age of consumerism?

This is a question being asked by philosophers today, and I believe it is the right question. When philosophical circles began posing this question, it quickly hit me as one of the most important questions of the last forty years. The United States and other like-minded countries are more consumer driven than ever, but as with most things, I don’t believe people ever stop to reflect on the ethical consequences of their life-styles. This is because philosophy isn’t practical enough. While the common man toils away in this life doing common things and assuming that life is in the status quo, the intellectuals who know that the rest of us are killing ourselves with our poor decisions are on high eating ambrosia while sitting on their golden toilets that sing to them as they…ya know. All the while, they are writing books on the most important challenges facing our world, but writing them in such a way that no one will read them except other intellectuals who already recognize the problem. All this serves to do is help smart and informed people affirm to one another how smart and informed they all are, while leaving out 95% of the population in the process. Even if the intellectuals put their heads together to find a consensus in the solution to this problem that only they know about, their solutions end up in the same books read by the same people. While the informed sit about, smiling and toasting themselves at dinner parties because they have solved the world’s problems, the rest of society wouldn’t (and couldn’t) be the wiser.

So then… what about our question from above? Consumers run about all day sucking in everything they can at the least possible cost or sacrifice to themselves, completely oblivious to the fact that they are compromising their character along the way. Integrity, nobility, loyalty, and honor are becoming things of the past because society has gone the way of the consumer. Reporters are trapped in an endless pit of reporting only the negative aspects of their beat, whether in sports, entertainment, or their own neighborhoods—because such reporting is lucrative. The most successful reality shows on television are the ones with the most sex and drama, and television today would be unrecognizable to anyone that has been dead 30 years or more. Why has the debauched become such a big seller, and why have formerly noble aspects of society either been corrupted or gone the way of the dodo? One word: “demand”.

Demand is that word that economists love and loathe at the same time. Demand is what makes the world go around. If the general populous wants something, enterprise will have no choice but to supply it or drown. The world can be a very sink or swim place. Because people demand the things that are generally immoral, suppliers are throwing their principles out of the window to cash in. Unfortunately, the problem is so old now that the sons and daughters of the people on the front-lines of compromise are being raised without this old code—this former sense of morality—because their fathers and mothers left it behind so long ago that it’s barely detectable anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating prudishness. I watch Rated-R movies and see some great benefits in society sort of “relaxing” a bit from its former need for perfection and censorship. But at the same time, I often fantasize about the days when my parents were kids and they could turn on the television to family-oriented shows rather than MTV’s The Real World in Chattanooga (…or wherever they might go next. I think they are running out of earth for that show, so maybe we’ll see Real World: Uranus sometime soon). Why do want to watch people have sex, cheat by having sex with someone else, then hate each other with a passion while living with the pain of betrayal. The answer is simple—sin. Because we have sin, we like to watch other people have it too—and because there is a demand for sin from the consumers and because we live in a consumer driven world—morality gets the backseat or sometimes pushed out of the car entirely.

I’m not looking to be un-American here; I’m not trying to rid the world of capitalism. I’m just crazy enough to want my capitalism with a heavy dose of conscience and character. When consumers are the conscience of our nation, then morality has a hard time surviving. In the end, it can’t survive. This is why moralism doesn’t work and why the Bible rejects moralism so emphatically. Moralism is a philosophy that says that morality is the goal of human life. Intrinsic within this philosophy is that man can accomplish his own sense of morality. The reality however is that humans left to their own morals and no authority or rescue from themselves will always fail to do what is best for society. Because of this, people need the Spirit of God as their conscience and guide. This is also why we can never make the mistake of allowing consumerism into the church. So the next time you find yourself in a church service thinking, “I don’t like the way we do that”, remember one thing: the church isn’t here to meet your demands.