How to End Your Consumerism
You, me—everyone, practically—in today’s world has been trained from birth to be a consumer. Much of it is obvious.
We’re taught to go into stores and pick the shiniest thing we see. Now we click around on our computers, buy and buy and buy, and have everything delivered to our doors. But how much thought do you give to each item you purchase?
Where did it come from? Do you truly need it? How long will it last? And when you’re done with it—what then? Can it be reused by someone else? Can it be recycled? Even recycling, these days, is tangled up with consumerism. We toss something in the recycling bin and think we’ve done our part, but the truth is that item came from somewhere—likely a polluting factory. It was shipped from place to place before finally reaching you, racking up a huge carbon footprint along the way.
We need to think about this more deeply. But the most important question is: how much do you consider your own life experience as a consumer?
Entertainment is one of the biggest arenas of consumption. We treat vacationing like a human right—riding ATVs across fragile land, skiing, going to movies, concerts, or festivals. When we go, we almost always go as consumers, not as full participants. Why? Because we’ve been taught we’re empty inside, that something needs to be filled—with entertainment, happiness, pleasure. And so we keep trying to fill it.
Here’s a different way to think about your consumerism: Could you have made it instead of buying it?
Take music, for example. I’m a musician. Could you have made music instead of just consuming it? Or take social gatherings—what if instead of going to an event as someone there to “consume” fun, you arrived as a fully alive, fully filled human being, ready to participate?
Even something as simple as a parade: the people walking by need someone to cheer. You can be that person, fully engaged. Full participation in life, instead of passive consumption, is the shift in consciousness we need if we’re going to slow the rapid destruction of our environment.
A participant in life picks up trash when they see it. A participant considers the packaging on everything they buy. A participant makes more of their own things—like people once did for most of human history. We used to make our own clothes, cook our own food. Fast food was not a thing; participating together in daily life was.
So start with small steps to end your consumerism.
What does this have to do with non-duality? Everything. The steps you take to end consumerism are the same steps you take in non-duality to uncover your true self. Who are you beneath all this?
Your true nature is not a consumer. Your true nature is a full participant in life.