You cannot serve both God and mammon

Over at Orion Magazine there is an interview with photographer Chris Jordan. His new series, Intolerable Beauty, shows the reality of American mass consumption through images like thousands of discarded cell phones and shiploads of glass bottles.

I am frequently surprised by how little negative feedback I get for my criticism of the American way of life. Maybe it is because we all know it is true: that we are living insane lives governed by materialism and greed. Or maybe the lack of resistance is a reflection of the depth of our denial. When I exhibit my work and talk about our rampant consumerism, no one ever seems to think I am talking about them.

Talking to Americans about consumerism is like talking to someone with an alcohol problem. Our culture is in deep denial about what we are doing to our planet, to the people of other nations, and the people of the future. And maybe the biggest tragedy of all is that we are in denial about how our consumer lifestyle is sapping our own spirits. We are slowly killing ourselves, and we all feel it. We know we are somehow getting screwed, that all this stuff isn't really satisfying, that we have lost something sacred that is related to the very core of our selves. But still we don’t act. Instead we get in our BMWs and drive to our skyscrapers and shuffle our papers for all of the best hours of the best days of the best years of our lives so we can afford our new kitchen remodel.

I just read Fahrenheit 451 last night. Jordan's words remind me of the parlors in the house that project sensational images onto all four walls, engrossing the viewer in three dimensional light and sound. Yet, for all the tantalization of the senses, the person watching becomes less human rather than more, seems to become a lump of clay that one could form and mold and prod without resistance. There is nothing sacred, nothing worth thinking about. Only constant motion and inane activity.

Captain Beatty, in Bradbury's novel, says in one of his last poetic soliloquies:

More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don't have to think, eh? Organize and organize and superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.