Over at Adbusters, a current article suggests that Buddha wouldn’t buy much for Christmas….
What would the Buddha buy? Not too much, not too little. Picture him with his own reusable grocery bag slung over his shoulder, talking to a shopper about making mindful choices: “Do you really need it?” “Where does it come from?” “How will it affect the environment when you’re done?” He might have enjoyed celebrating International Buy Nothing Day on November 29 as a spiritual retreat from frantic holiday shopping
Not a message the panicked retailers want you to inhale. Despite the fact that Americans are losing their jobs and losing their houses, the retailers want you to buy stuff. I even want to buy stuff buying stuff creates a false sense of well being. Yes. I still matter in this crazy capitalist world if I can buy stuff. After all one of the most oft repeated myths of Reaganism is that his administration promoted a consumer driven recovery. We were supposed to fight back against terrorism by buying stuff. Because of course the terrorists hate us for our malls so if we were using them we had to be enveloped in some mass resistance. And what would be the point to a mythical economic recovery: yes we would be able to buy stuff again.
The author of the article at adbusters argues….
With Dharma, a marketplace can be seen as an opportunity to practice mindfulness, rather than mindless consumption. Nothing exotic – we do it every day. In each advertisement and at each potential point of purchase is a karmic choice, the opportunity to practice wise compassion for the universal human condition. The bodhisattva shopper vows to consider all beings.
The problem is Americans aren’t wired that way. Those of us who escape the ravages of this ongoing economic shrivel are likely to go back to our old habits. The only people who will learn something are the ones who end up permanently displaced and those will be the exact group nobody wants to hear from. Just to negative. Especially in a nation so bleakly defined by winners and losers. Indeed, the new “class war” might not end up being waged against Wall street, or “the rich” or corporate America but the dumbass people who took the sub-prime mortgages or bought houses that took up too much of their income. No doubt that will be the language of a resurgent Republicanism. Some people just didn’t have the right to assume they could get in on the game of American consumerism. And look they dragged us all down.