Life Rhythms and Consumerism

After writing my previous post I came across this quotation from Alan Hirsch in the book "The Forgotten Ways." I hadn't thought of it, but discovering the joy in the rhythm of life is anti-consumeristic. This as opposed to the consumerism of waiting for the next big thing to bring meaning and purpose to life. The quotation is long, but worth it. (This will all make a little more sense if you read the post right before this first.)

"Under this excessive influence of the market, experiences, indeed life itself, tends to become commodified. In such an economy, people are viewed as mere consumptive units. The suburbs all orbit around the central consumerist temple called The Shopping Mall. Teenagers walk aimlessly up and down these soulless corridors as if looking for an answer that somehow evades them in the windows. Their parents saunter through the same malls indulging in a dose of 'retail therapy.' Disneyland, cruise vacations, extreme sports, drugs, and the like are consumable experiences. It has often been noted that in the postmodern condition we can consume new identities like we do new clothes. We do this either by moving into the groovier inner city, or by dropping out and becoming feral, changing our clothes, changing our friends and looking around for new ones, or buying this or that product that identifies us with new, more desirable networks of people. In this cultural situation everything, even personal identity and religious meaning, becomes a commodity that we can now trade in, depending on the latest fads, and by consuming the latest products."