The Myth of Consumerism

Every society has mythology. In some societies, it's religion. Our religion is consumerism.

In a capitalist society, the goal is to make money, by whatever means possible, exploiting whichever potential weakness that might exist. The human race is one with a wild imagination, and this wild imagination, though a great strength, can, like all great strengths, serve as a potential weakness.
It is our imaginations that advertising exploits, and it is our imaginations that religion and myth traditionally played the role of satiating, telling stories that have morals to them, lessons to be learned. Now consumerism fulfills this role. The consumer ideology serves as the golden rule, advertising serves as sermons, products serve as our idoltry, and just as religion instills faith at an early age, so too does consumerism.
Ellen Weis (qtd. in "Advertising Characters" 1997) speaks from the perspective of one who is an authority on mythology. Her analogy between religion and consumerism is an...