• Consume 45% of all meat and fish, the poorest fifth 5% • Consume 58% of total energy, the poorest fifth less than 4% • Have 74% of all telephone lines, the poorest fifth 1.5% • Consume 84% of all paper, the poorest fifth 1.1% • Own 87% of the world's vehicle fleet, the poorest fifth less than 1%"
Global Issues also highlighted some of our grossly misplaced priorities. While in just one year the United States spent $8 billion on cosmetics and the world devoted $780 billion to wars and the military. Global expenditures on basic education totaled a scant $6 billion. That same year the world appropriated a miserly $9 billion to provide people with clean drinking water.
Bear in mind that Global Issues derived these numbers from a United Nations report issued in 1998. However, World Bank data from 2003 reflected little improvement in the glaring disparities of consumption or in our shamefully misplaced priorities.
Anchoring Consumerism as it does, it is patently absurd to believe for a moment that Christmas is the least bit threatened. Consumerism is essential to those stalking the corridors of power in the United States. They need the "Season to be Jolly" to obscure the crimes they have committed (including offenses for which men were sentenced to hang at Nuremberg) and to ensure that the hoi polloi remains obedient.
No, Consumerism, and hence Christmas, are quite safe. They are essential components of the power structure spawning and protecting beasts like Bush and Cheney.
In his 1999 book, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, Richard Robbins observed:
"[T]he consumer revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was caused in large part by a crisis in production; new technologies had resulted in production of more goods, but there were not enough people to buy them. Since production is such an essential part of the culture of capitalism, society quickly adapted to the crisis by convincing people to buy things, by altering basic institutions and even generating a new ideology of pleasure. The economic crisis of the late nineteenth century was solved, but at considerable expense to the environment in the additional waste that was created and resources that were consumed."
With respect to advertising, the deeply compelling psychological mechanism through which American Capitalists entice the masses to buy more and more of what they don't need, Robbins explained:
"The goal of the advertisers was to aggressively shape consumer desires and create value in commodities by imbuing them with the power to transform the consumer into a more desirable person. ... In 1880, only $30 million was invested in advertising in the United States; by 1910, new businesses, such as oil, food, electricity and rubber, were spending $600 million, or 4 percent of the national income, on advertising. Today that figure has climbed to well over $120 billion in the United States and to over $250 billion worldwide."
And the Corporatocracy has received a tremendous bang for its advertising buck, as evidenced by more statistics provided by Global Issues:
"World consumption has expanded at an unprecedented pace over the 20th century, with private and public consumption expenditures reaching $24 trillion in 1998, twice the level of 1975 and six times that of 1950. In 1900 real consumption expenditure was barely $1.5 trillion."
Given the horrendous fallout from America's extraordinarily avaricious behavior, perhaps a "War on Christmas", and hence Consumerism, wouldn't be such a calamity after all. But rather than launching a belligerent attack so typical of the United States, what we really need is a non-violent spiritual struggle to establish a meaningful observance of the birth of Christ.
Some view Jesus Christ as a god, some a man, and others a myth. Yet regardless of which concept one embraces, the moral teachings attributed to Christ rank at or near the peak of humanity's ethical evolution. Devoting a day to commemorate him certainly makes sense when one considers some of the other historical figures whom we celebrate.
While it is impossible to be 100% certain, it is extremely unlikely that Christ would find much virtue in the perversion that Christmas has become. I suspect he would demand answers to at least four questions:
1. Why is so much emphasis placed on materialism on a day honoring an individual who devoted himself to the poor and down-trodden?
Jason Miller is a recovering US American middle class suburbanite who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano's Journal Online's associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
