One can buy a lot in the supermarket, but not hope

A thermometer in the proverbial mouth of society would measure a high temperature. We are all feverish. Psychiatrist Dirk De Wachter calls our society ‘borderline‘. Are we aware of a kind of collective delusion? ‘Hypermarkets’ , that offer up to 30.000 articles, have increased their turnover from 616 to 4.823 billion euro. A good and strong pupil who perfectly meets our economic model of better, faster… and always more.

The supermarket is a temple of consumption.
Every product cries out to be bought . With an agressiveness that borders on hysterical, our advertising boys try to convince us that margarine produces a more harmonious family life and that coca cola creates friendships. They shamelessly use insights of psychology to encourage people to consume. And they do not spare anyone, not even children.

The energy that is required of human beings to produce 30.000 articles, to distribute them and to sell them is colossal. This whole chain mobilises gigantic forces and realises this with such passion, that it betrays the conviction that to produce and consume material things will give us what we are looking for.

Does it still surprise you that we are drawn into consumption with forever stronger stimuli , at the cost of other things ?
 
It is a kind of psychological materialism that makes that we are more preoccupied with ‘having’ than ‘being’. If there even is time for ‘being’. Recently a study with 8000 students at the Catholic University of Leuven has shown that 1/7 has serious emotional problems: fear, depression, suicidal thoughts. Philosopher and author Hein Stufkens said in an interview :

” People that think about suicide, do not really want to stop living, they want to stop living ‘in this way’. They want to live differently. They are looking for real life “.

These are hard facts that in the West we are strongly ego-centric. Isn’t it high time that we look beyond the borders of the ego? One can maybe buy a lot in the supermarket, but you do not buy friendship there, no hope and no trust. Just like it is impossible to buy happiness, which is a good thing!

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Preceding

Dutch version / Nederlandstalige versie: In de supermarkt kan je (g)een hoop kopen

Looking for the consummation of presents

Luxury

Summermonths and consumerism

Your position about materialistic desires having conquered the world

Learning that stuff is just stuff

Fear, struggles, sadness, bad feelings and depression

Material wealth, Submission and Heaven on earth

Family happiness and little things we do

Why “Selfishness” Doesn’t Properly Mean Being Shortsighted and Harmful to Others

Looking at a conservative review of Shop Class As Soul Craft

Life isn’t unfair

Soft values? Needed heart- and- soul!

Watch out

You’re Lighter Than Air~

How do Other People Feel About Mental Health?

How to Find the Meaning of Life and Reach a State of Peace

Misleading world, stress, technique, superficiality, past, future and positivism

O’ Captain! My Captain!

Just be yourself…

Searching for fulfillment and meaning through own efforts, facing unsatisfaction and depression

Less… is still enough

Less for more

A bird’s eye and reflecting from within

We all have to have dreams

Forward ever backwards never!

“Der Grad der K… De mate van creativiteit – Degree of creativity

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Additional reading

1. Capitalism
2. Increasing wealth gap of immense proportions in the Capitalist World
3. Capitalism and economic policy and Christian survey
4. Migrants to the West #3
5. Materialism, would be life, and aspirations
6. Poverty and conservative role patterns
7. Forms of slavery, human trafficking and disrespectful attitude to creation to be changed
8. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #3 Right to Human dignity
9. Welfare state and Poverty in Flanders #9 Consumption
10. Paris World Summit of Conscience, International interfaith gathering #3
11. Message of Pope Francis I for the 48th World Communications Day
12. société, crise, esprit
13. From Winterdarkness into light of Spring
14. Parenthood made more difficult
15. Living Apart together
16. Being Charlie 6
17. Land not an ordinary asset
18. Securing risks
19. Reflect on how much idolizing happens
20. Looking to the East and the West for Truth
21. Oh god, this is never going to end!
22. Depression Is and When
23. What IF you’re only driven by stress?
24. A little ray of sunshine.
25. Getting fate in your change to positiveness
26. Remember there’s a light in the next day
27. Pieces
28. Joy: Foundation for a Positive Life
29. Be an Encourager
30. Four Pressing Needs in Rural Communities, and How the Church Should Respond
31. Trusting, Faith, calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #3 Voice of God #2 Instructions and Laws

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Further reading

1. What I Want
2. Materialism or Emotions?
3. Snail
4. The choice of being “choiceless”
5. Convenience Store | Grocery Store in Delhi-NCR, India
6. Gloomy retail outlook for the first quarter
7. Walmart – World’s Largest Retail Chain
8. The Supermarket is the Nexus of Existential Dread
9. Battle Of The Supermarkets
10. Grocery Chains Aren’t Building New Supermarkets Where Most Needed
11. there’s more to stacking shelves than you think
12. These are the dirtiest places in every supermarket
13. Grass hair clip..?
14. Russian supermarket slammed for selling chopping boards with photo of Barack Obama as a monkey
15. Russian store sold ‘monkey Obama’ chopping boards & apologized
16. Day 7 – An Educational Day at the Supermarket
17. What’s the Best Way to Sell a Product?
18. Overhaul the world’s money policy
19. Intermittent truth
20. Global economies shape our cities: is it acceptable?
21. Woes and Watch-out Warnings
22. Listening to the Web
23. Please Sir, I Want Some More
24. I am rich and famous. Now what…?
25. The truth about Consume
26. How Much Do I Consume?
27. Rule #105: Cyclical consumption
28. Materialistic Wants? Not.
29. “money is the reason we exist, everybody knows it, it’s a fact, kiss kiss”
30. Top Risks for a Consumer-Driven Society
31. Cotton and cocaine
32. The Culture of Excesses- Losing Humanity
33. Contrasts.
34. Contented Consumer?
35. The foolish man
36. Being No One One, Precis: Part 2
37. Turning the Poor into Consumers
38. Capitalising on Christmas
39. Lighting up Christmas
40. Christmas fragment 1
41. Holiday Shopping For Your Token Atheist Friend
42. Holiday gift-giving between adults is a needless, consumerist chore
43. To Save Pandas, We Must Eat them
44. Things I’ve learned from killing consumerism #13 – We want beauty for ourselves
45. Obama: Stop pretending you care about Syrian people
46. Should We Be Scared?
47. Its 100% OK to offend people in my world
48. Life..a never ending..
49. Born Privileged
50. {quote of the day}
51. Only to be Lost
52. Run
53. Self Harm
54. My Only Way Out
55. Ahhhhhh
56. the curtain comes up
57. I Have This Urge
58. Letter Of Departure
59. The truth about approuachable
60. Officially Trumped: When “being Real” gets too Real
61. Contented Consumer?
62. Magic
63. First Feelings – Sonnet No. 4
64. Friends
65. Universe
66. 2015/2016

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