Consumerism has its Personal Cost
As stated in the previous post in this series, consumerism is heavily motivated by a strong individualism. The corporate or common good is often far from the mind of the consumer. Individualism as a form of identity creates in people a sense of isolation. With this isolation, comes fear and insecurity. Many people today pursue acquisitiveness in order to control their private world and establish some sort of security for themselves and their family. This is a virulent combination. Strangely, this can lead to an even greater insecurity and tremendous stress related to the challenge of maintaining the consumptive lifestyle and keeping boredom at bay.
Legitimate needs (food, water, shelter) can be met, but illegitimate wants (laced with pride, envy, greed) are literally insatiable. They create obsessive behaviour similar to that found in alcoholism or drug addiction. The West invented shop-aholism. In this sense, the consumer ethos emerges as the opiate of the masses. Enough is never enough; there is always the craving for more. The boom in the therapy industry in North America has a lot to do with the resulting neuroses and boredom caused by crude consumerism. It turns out not to provide meaning and fulfilment, but the opposite, soul angst. We note the very sad example of the wealthy and eccentric aircraft billionaire Howard Hughes. Read More…
are poorly formulated and outright inadequate. In particular, Craig deals with what Dawkins calls the main argument of his book – the “who designed the designer” objection. Among other things, Craig points out that: “In order to recognize an explanation as the best, you don’t need to be able to explain the explanation. In fact, such a requirement would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed.”1In chapter two, J.P. Moreland deals with The Image of God and the Failure of Scientific Atheism. He explains that atheism and/or naturalism cannot give an account for five particular (and crucially important) features of human persons, what Moreland calls the “five recalcitrant features of the image of God.” These five are consciousness and the mental, free will, rationality, unified selves, and intrinsic, equal value and rights. He concludes that “given the epistemological and Grand Story constraints placed on the scientific naturalist ontology, not a single one of these five fits naturally in a non-ad-hoc way.”2 Like much of Moreland’s work, it is profound and fascinating; a mere listing of his five points does no justice to the depth of content he provides for each. 
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