The Reeducation of Desire in a Consumer Culture

IN THIS ESSAY I ASSERT THAT AFFLUENT CONSUMER CULTURES INCULCATE in their residents certain forms of desiring. One of those forms tends to silence the complicity that the affluent enjoy through appropriating the material benefits that come to them through the labor and poor living conditions of people in domestic and global poverty. A prime example is the cheap food that political policy and economic structures promote. The affluent are themselves spiritually stunted through the dynamics of complicity. The essay suggests that contrition is a gift of grace in the face of complicity. Consumerism blocks contrition; that is the operative dynamic here. The failure to be contrite blocks the work of grace in people’s lives. However, contrition can slingshot those who experience the Christian vision of desire into a budding transformation which reeducates their desires. Some of those consequences involve a redirection of our sensory experience and an increase in community and compassion.