Spirituality in a Consumer Culture: Happy Consciousness, Narcissism, and the Corruption of Consumer Desire.

• In Event: 512 - Section on Consumers and Consumption Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Irony, Individualization, and Narcissism

Abstract

This paper argues that consumerism has infected Western culture to the degree that the mystical, traditional, religious, or emotion aesthetic has been subjugated by the hegemony of narcissistic individualism, absorbing it into the commodification of culture and the relentless pursuit of self. Through the ongoing burying of the subjective feeling into a calculable formula to be bought and sold, science, technology, mass media and advertisers have successfully reframed Western culture as a product of consumerism. Building on this theme, the paper offers contemporary applications of this concept in religion, therapy, and happy consciousness, alongside a critique of mass media.

Author

• Hans Tokke, New York City College of Technology- CUNY