From Consumer to Citizen

For most of human history, we lived in what Jon Alexander calls The Subject Story. Human civilization was structured hierarchically, with most people being ruled by one or a small group of other people. And for most of history, the people believed that was by divine order or other kind of providence. The elite were simply better than the masses. They were smarter and otherwise more worthy. They had more because they deserved more. The people accepted their place in the order of things, often without pushback. They were there to serve.

The trade-off, the thing the people got from not pushing back on the vast economic disparities they witnessed, was safety. They were being taken care of. They had enough to eat, a warm place to sleep, freedom to marry (within a specific framework) and have children who could be raised without violence, relatively speaking.

Part of this Subject Story is a tacit acceptance from the people that they are incapable of taking care of themselves. They need a strongman or an elite group of royals who can manage all the pieces on the chessboard. There need to be people in charge, a political class, or a caste that the people can trust to manage the big picture. Kings, Brahmin, Emperors, even Presidents. People with power, often surrounded by other important, wealthy classes living bigger lives than the average person who agrees to the system so long as they can feed their families and not get hassled too much.

The Subject story was the human story for a long time, but something shifted between the 18th and 20th centuries with the rise of democracy and introduction of commercialism.

The Consumer story turns the subject story upside down. (SLOW) Instead of the ruler being served by the people, the people take on the role of being served. Beginning with the dawn of democracy, average people started seeing themselves as powerful. In the beginning, there was still a ruling class. Presidents were chosen from a small group of elite men. Only a small portion of the population had the vote, and there was put into place an electoral college in case the people got it wrong. But, the idea of democracy, of the people voting for their own leadership, of leadership changing, shifting power from one person to another, from one group to another, was a very new way of considering how we structure human societies.

That was the backdrop to becoming full-on consumers. With American democracy in particular, the idea that people are not born into power or status, but that they can earn it took hold. Those concepts were easier here where there wasn’t an established elite and where we’d dramatically, even violently, gotten rid of the monarchy. Now the people are left to themselves, touting independence, self-rule, self-reliance, and most importantly, choice.

These concepts were becoming popular globally, even though they hadn’t quite taken hold, by the 1920s. This is when advertising and marketing saw its chance. A man by the name of Edward Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to increase their sales. Rather than follow traditional routes, Bernays created a different kind of campaign. Tobacco was used by men almost exclusively. Women never smoked in public and in some cases it was illegal even if they wanted to. At the very least, it was considered crass. Bernays hired a group of fashionable women in NYC, the influencers of their time, to smoke cigarettes during the 1929 Easter Parade. He told them it was about claiming their power. Newly able to vote, women’s identities were changing; smoking in public was touted as the next step toward freedom.

So, beautiful women in their Easter bonnets, parading down 5th Avenue, were smoking. They looked modern. Self-reliant. Chic. Sexy. Independent. Every woman wanted a cigarette.

And consumer culture took root.

By the 1940s, consumerism was America’s greatest export. Wanting. Having. Even in places where income levels were very low, the desire for bigger, better, faster, stronger, transformed global cultures. We can buy our way to happiness. Commerce became our biggest investment in peace with multinational treaties and trade organizations supported by the planet’s greatest political powers.

There are a lot of implications for this, but one of them is a new global culture that flipped the subject story upside down. No longer here to serve, the people are the ones being waited on. We have the power of the purse. We get to decide what we want. We are here to be satisfied. The customer is always right.

Consumer culture has saturated all of our institutions. I can’t help but see it in the current election with each party promising things to the people they want voting for them. What can we offer to buy your vote? Student loan forgiveness. No tax on tips. $20,000 for every person buying their first home. Child tax credits.

I’m not knocking any of those programs. In fact, I think things like capping the price of insulin at $35 is a great way to demonstrate how government can work and make our lives better. I’m using these as examples of ways the consumer model is the lens we use for everything, that everyone, no matter who they are or what they want, is trying to sell us something.

And we agree to this model because we’re buying. We like the power we think it gives us. We like feeling like what we want is what drives the conversation from adding plus sizes to mass markets to normalizing hybrid cars, to cancelling Aunt Jemima. Our money is the sword we use to carve out the world we think we want.

But now, we are in a moment of turning. The consumer story isn’t working for us anymore. Our consumption has brought our planet to the edge of being able to sustain human life. Our need for more money has us working 80 hour weeks, supported by all the things we bought like fully stocked home offices. It’s easy to feel left behind when your neighbor has a new car and you can’t afford one or other people are going on expensive vacations and you’re worried about the price of eggs. Personal computing, deigned and purchased for our convenience, has created a culture of exhaustion and over-exposure. We can’t go on this way.

The need for change has inspired a new rise of authoritarianism. The subject model. Maybe we should just go back to letting someone else make all the decisions. We see this shift in Italy, France, Hungary, India, Venezuela, and now here in the US where 50% of our nation would prefer what they perceive to be a strong leader who will single-handedly make things right.

Understanding the implications of that shift, I would like to suggest we don’t go back, and instead we go forward. The new model is the Citizen story. This is the story I think most of us imagine when we talk about democracy and articulate our fantasies about the founding fathers. This is the story the Occupy movement tried to embody. It’s a story not of the dependence of the subject or the independence of the consumer, but of interdependence. It’s not about duty, or of rights, but of purpose. We don’t obey, we don’t demand, we participate. This is the story that allows us all to be part of something new, not led by, not requiring of others, but forming groups of mutuality and connection.

I’ve become attuned to the ways the citizen story could transform our culture, leaning into collectives with shared ownership and models not based on profit at all like free-stores. And while I could give more examples of how hive-thinking could work here in the city or other political systems, I’m even more interested in how it could work in the church.

While churches historically functioned using the subject model with ministers and priests in charge, the consumer model is now in full form. Members act like – and are treated like – consumers. Customers. We have something to sell and hope they’ll buy. Sometimes we brand ourselves, sometimes we’re not so slick. We ask ourselves at staff meetings about what people want. Should we offer a bible study? Or a group for singles? A brunch for young adults? How do we attract more members? We invest in our future by paying a lot for great music or exciting children’s programs.

And in plenty of churches, those investments are weighed by the return. We hired a membership director who cost us $100,000, but we only increased our membership by 5%. We added hours to our religious education staff, but our youth group hasn’t grown. I hear these complaints from religious professionals all over the country in every denomination. Boards want results and with the decline in religious activity, they aren’t seeing them, and are therefore calling their staff poor hires, ultimately firing them and looking for people who can meet the expected numbers.

I’m not going to lie and say there’s none of that here. I don’t see it in the numbers; that’s not how it plays out. But, there’s a consumerism deep in our bones too. It looks different in part because we don’t rely on pledge money, so members can’t threaten to withhold donations if they don’t like something. Here, it looks a little more like a divide between staff and members, where staff serve members who sometimes get angry if they don’t like the way they’re being served.

But, of all the places I’ve been, this seems like one of the best to think about shifting to the Citizen story. Citizen organizations are powered by the mission. They value mutuality, inter-connectedness, relationship. Everyone has a role to play, everyone is valued. Events aren’t put on by one group to serve another, but are imagined, and designed by the whole. We all have partners, we collaborate, we support each other.

And we care deeply for each other. In the Citizen story, people are seen. They are loved. They feel held by a community of people. They know where to go when they are frightened or need comfort. They know who their partners are when there’s been a grave injustice they want to fight.

The precondition of the Citizen story is belief in ourselves as creative, capable, caring people, not lazy, self-interested, and competitive like the consumer model assumes. This is an opportunity to step into our shared power, to trust ourselves and each other, to expand empathy rather than sink into apathy. It means risking making mistakes, being judged naïve, or unrealistic. It’s in the citizen story that we can commit to a shared vision of the world, and to each other as co-creators, letting go of complaining, of ordering, of thinking we are here to be served. Instead, we are here to create, to build, to acknowledge our inherent worth and potential power, always warmer, kinder and smarter, together.

I know that for us to live into this citizen story, we probably need to have a home of our own. But, I think we can start today, if we want to.

Here are some things we can all do.

We can treat each other with kindness. Reach out to someone you know is in need. Join the Wednesday Worthy Now group. Show up for community events. Ask Jil if she needs help with the kids on Sunday. Or, here’s something harder, reimagine this as a multigenerational congregation. This room on Sundays is for everyone. People with a variety of needs, including your own. Some people need space and will sit apart. Some need community and will sit together. Some people listen best sitting down. Others need to stand. I’ve seen people lie on the floor or run down the aisle. Some people make noise and some are quiet. Some sing loudly and some just bob their heads. Consider an embrace of it all.

Next time you want to complain, ask yourself if you can imagine a way to become part of a solution. How can you help? If you want something to happen, can you be the engine for that?

This mindset will serve us well if we can get there. We are this church in the same way we are this city. We are this planet, part of the natural rhythms of Earth. We are this community, not a consumer of it, but a living breathing part interdependent with everyone else.

The time for this change is now. Frankly, change is happening like it or not. There is a turning. We can shift backwards or push forwards. Let us, together, become citizens of this church, living in a hive of justice making, putting Love, always at the center of Everything.