We avoid shopping like a plague during Christmas. Why waste time in long queues and in shops that you can hardly move around without stepping on another person and with other humans breathing into your face? In fact, our motto is to shop only if necessary. Necessity and what you think you need should always be in conversation. One commentator re-wrote the 1st line of the 23rd Psalm to read: "God is my shepherd, I will not want more than I need". Spot on! We also try not to let price nor brand determine where we shop. This is never easy - especially if your credit-ability will determine whether it is the farmer's market, M&S, Lidl, Waitrose, TESCO, the Pound Shop or Charity Shops.
Businesses would do their utmost to ensure that we worship over their counters. Why, for instance, would people queue up in the early hours of Boxing Day to stampede for a bargain? And without even batting an eyelid we would end up in debt thinking we have struck a bargain. I wonder if the millions spent their Christmas night just thinking of what they would go for in that stampede rather than enjoying their holidays, their time with family and the celebrations? A news item on French Television noted that because thousands of people are disappointed with their Christmas gift a new online company offers a service to help you exchange these gifts. Somebody will be minting millions from our insatiable wants. Shopping has become a deadly and costly ritual, in spite of all the new talk about its spirituality.
The situation has become so ridiculous that the BBC had one of its reporters giving tips as to how one should be prepared for the shopping onslaught: ensure that you have a handbag full of water for dehydration; pills for headache and a banana for energy, among other things. And in case you are proper and decent this will not be the place for you, as it will be a “dog eat dog” situation with the need to use your elbow, instead of your feet, to get the bargain items you think you badly need. We shop, therefore we are. The depression, however, sets in by mid-January when the credit card statement arrives.
Businesses, of course, vie for our custom and will go at lengths to pamper us with loyalty cards, points, incentives and bargains. And like Pavlov’s puppies we salivate to these in remarkable ways. We keep returning, with wagging tails to these new gods who are only after our money. What goes unattended is the length to which these new gods will go to keep a tab on us. The gods of businesses have got us well shackled.
Take supermarkets, as one example: they spend millions of pounds studying the psychology of us shoppers, rethinking the layout of their aisles, and where products are best located to get us to spend. They even invest in surveillance gadgets that are used to track the habits of those of us who walk through their doors and along their aisles. And, they certainly know how to recoup that sum spent on these and make billions of pounds in profit. We shop excessively, therefore they profit.
Have you ever given thought to why supermarkets know exactly what kind of offers and discounts to send to us? They know what aisle we visit, where we do out pit stops to load up our carts, what range of products we go for. Churches may wish to take a leaf out of supermarkets’ manual to re-read their communities before they become totally obsolete. The moment, we pass through the threshold of our nearest supermarket they already know which aisle we would visit, what shelf level we would reach for and will even listen in to our conversations. The latter I do not mind as I am sure they would be turned off by my constant talking back to their tricks, quarrelling about their excessive plastic-wrapping of almost everything and my cynical/dubious comments about their organic range. This may be one reason why ever so often the products on the aisles I visit are shifted around and located at different levels!
Supermarkets are not daft. They know exactly how to let us know that they care for loyal and committed customers. And, in an individualistic and impersonal society they know the place of valuing, pampering and affirming us. So we stick with them believing that we do matter. In fact they prey upon our individualism, for that is when we are most vulnerable. What really matters for them is our credit-ability.
What can we do to break this cycle? In spite of the post-Christmas rush to purchase ten handbags and twenty pants, how can this trend be countered? Little acts matter and count. For instance, try shopping less (including all those internet offers); try reducing the number of times you visit the supermarket; switch off your TV and try not to look at the ads (they help create needs); do not be fooled by the offers and if you go for them do so with another friend or neighbour (then it becomes a deal); make your corner shop work for you and your neighbours; support the local farmers’ market; start your own vegetable garden (or do so with a group). And when you do visit the supermarket (as we all will do) subvert the tracking and talk back to given the eavesdroppers much food for thought.
Why not try this as a New Year challenge? And do not bother that you may not be able to keep it. One can only try!
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