'Panic Saturday': Rebranding the Week

Last year saw the unpleasant arrival of 'Black Friday' in the pre-Christmas calendar. This year it was the turn of 'Panic Saturday', or 'Saturday' as it's normally known. The last Saturday before Christmas joins an unspecified Friday in late November in the sheep-pen of branded dates.

Before we end up with every single date from November 1 - December 23 rebranded by the retail lobby (hand in glove with the mainstream media, who seem to happily parrot this stuff without ever challenging it), how about some alternative names which truly capture the spirit of Christmas: for example

Sharing Monday
Unselfish Tuesday
Hospitality Wednesday
Thankful Thursday
Phone-Call Friday (for ringing that person you've not spoken to for a while)
Kindness Saturday
Switch-Off Sunday (minimise screen time, maximise face time)

None of these have any money in them, which is one reason they probably won't catch on.

The other reason is that none of them generate the same sense of urgency as the branded days - there may not be another day to catch this bargain (which is cobblers of course, just wait until January). But there's always another day to be kind, unselfish, make the phone call etc. Good deeds are easier to leave for later, if the clamour for a bargain has a grip on our souls. And if it does have that grip, we need a buy-nothing season to wean us off it: cold turkey is for life, not just for Christmas.

Christmas Gifts: Archbishop v Advertisers

There's a Justin Welby interview with money saving expert Martin Lewis due for broadcast this evening, which is already making the news. Here's some of it:

The archbishop said that if he suggested that people should stop giving Christmas gifts, no-one would listen.

"It's obviously not what Christmas is about but to be absolutely honest, there's not that much point in saying it because nobody's going to pay attention," he said.

He added: "Giving at Christmas reflects that generosity of God. So be generous in a way that shows love and affection rather than trying to buy love and affection," he said.

"You can't buy it, you can show it, and when you show it, it comes back at you with interest.

"Save up for the Christmas budget, be sensible, don't put pressure on your finances - don't make your life miserable with Christmas.

"Share love and affection with reasonable gifts that demonstrate you really care for someone. That makes for the best Christmas you could ever have."

The CofE daily bulletin also has some of the coverage. There is a relentless attempt by advertisers to define what Christmas is about, and of course their false paradise includes us spending more money than last year on stuff we never knew we could manage without. I hope the Archbishops voice is heard above the beeping credit card machines.

Olympic Sponsors Parade, aka the Torch Relay

Went to the centre of Yeovil at crack of dawn today to watch the Olympic torch relay. First stop was bacon butties at the United Reformed Church, then we joined the growing crowds and waited.

After several local buses, an middle aged boy racer showing off his car, and various police bikes, came a parade of sponsors carnival floats, complete with freebies, logos and people trying to whip up the crowd into the nearest thing to excitement Yeovil can manage at 7.30am. Then, to the sound of church bells and local radio, came the flame itself, the thing we'd all come to see.

Arriving home, my inbox had a link to this piece by Jarrett, our local college chaplain. A local man has recently offered to sell advertising space on his body to support charities. Human billboard Chris Watson will have logos tattood onto his skin, in exhange for donations. Channel 4 have already spotted the story and are planning a documentary, which should boost the cash take considerably. Is this sacrificial giving, or the ultimate victory for marketing?

Jarrett writes of... the sheer volume and invasiveness of modern advertising. The places you can go without seeing advertising of any kind are rapidly depleting. Our recognition of company logos is an accepted norm in modern society. Students last week were showing me the highest downloaded free app on the iPhone: a Logos Quiz. Logos are displayed fully or partially, and you have to guess which company it is. Enough correct answers takes you to the next level where (yay!) more logos can be guessed.

The colonisation of the Olympics by branding and sponsorship (just watch Chariots of Fire, then compare and contrast with this: 14 logos and invitation to 'be part of it' by buying merchandise. Yes, if you haven't got £400 for the last remaining seats for the beach volleyball, you can always pretend you're there by shopping online.

Won't be long now.....

How To Preach and Watch the Olympics at the Same Time

Hot on the heels of the Holy Water Bucket, another corker from Kevin Mayhew

Yes, with the Digital Lectern you can 'look at your notes' without ever losing pesky bits of paper on the floor, and catch the beach volleyball at the same time. Why spend a couple of hundred quid on a basic notebook when you can splash £1345 on a nice wooden stand with one built in? The portability is a bit tricky -  I'm not sure the other folk in the cafe will take too well to your 'laptop', and it's a bit bulky for carrying around. But hey, this is the reason why people in church sacrificially give, so that the preacher can have an autocue.

The marketing for this is that it gives 'hassle free, paperless services'. Though of course, it's always worth printing out your sermon in full, just in case the screen crashes.....

Own up folks, who's thinking to themselves, in the immortal words of Will Smith 'I have got to get me one of these!' ???

There's Already Enough Tat In the World

Update: I thought it couldn't be worse but it is. They're selling Henry VIIII decorations too, £8.95.

Dismayed to find this on sale at the York Minster Online Shop.

That's right, you can spend £6.95 on a doll of Rowan Williams to hang on your Christmas tree. Or, if you're one of the many Anglican pressure groups you can buy one and then squeeze as hard as you can to get it to say what you want. Or if you're a journalist you can buy one and put words into his mouth.

But why buy one at all? With the 7 skinny cows emerging from the Nile and no Joseph's stockpile from the years of plenty, I can't see any possible world where this is the best use of £6.95.

Thanks to Huw for the tip off.

How to Save Money on Christmas Lights

This is doing the rounds on Facebook, and rightly so.

In the meantime, if you want to watch something guaranteed to put you off Christmas shopping, then watch the Littlewoods advert. I think I only found one thing there that costs less than £100. The slogan should read "Littlewoods, we'll bankrupt you before Cameron does." And this is the kind of thing I'd probably write about it if I wasn't a vicar.

How To Sell Stuff to Christians

Fascinating piece on British Religion in Numbers a few days back, on how consumerist Christians manage to square the circle with themselves (ourselves, lets be honest here). This week's turned into a bit of a marketing theme....

More than 400 people living in the UK were shown an advert for the same watch that was either depicted as being an item of desire and public recognition, or as an item of functional value.



Half of the sample identified themselves as Christians believing that materialism was wrong. Although non-religious consumers did not prefer one advert over the other, religious consumers were 25% more likely to purchase the watch if they saw the advert that did not portray it as a materialistic item.


‘We found that expensive luxury watches that were advertised as being showy or an item of envy were frowned upon by religious consumers. However, when the same item was advertised as being high quality and enduring, rather than having materialistic value, the religious consumers were significantly more willing to purchase the product.’


The authors claim that the results of the study ‘help to explain how many Christians acquire and store materialistic items for themselves and their family, despite many Biblical teachings that discourage hoarding wealth.’ They suggest the findings could be used by marketers, advertisers and sales forces to drive sales up.


‘It’s important to know what type of person you’re dealing with,’ said Dr Shankar. ‘If you are talking to someone who is clearly not averse to being materialistic, then it doesn’t really matter what you say. But, if you’re targeting a high-end, expensive, flashy product to people who are put off by materialism, then you need to change your approach.’
In other words, Mammon is more subtle than we thought, and we're more materialistic than we like to think we are. At the end of the day, we still buy far more stuff than we need, and consume far more resources than our fair share as planetary citizens.

I still maintain that Christian marketing is a contradiction in terms, but con myself that our families minor victory over marketing (all of us, kids included, now automatically mute the ads on TV) represents VM day, rather than a minor skirmish. I'm still far too easily taken in by BOGOF and big discounts.

Internet Monk is also worth a read, notably on the 'Jesus junk' market, and Orthocubans response. Excuse me whilst I pin a WWJD badge to my JC/DC t-shirt. 

Crikey

I've got so used to stuff that's offensive to Christians, or just plain offensive, getting past the censors that it's quite a shock to find the Advertising Standars Authority actually banning an advert that uses a winking 'Jesus' to plug a 'miraculous' deal.

Better late than never, the judgement seems to have just been issued, even though the advert came out in April, and was aimed at the Easter season, but the company which produced it withdrew it fairly quickly after complaints.

Just makes me wonder if sometimes Christians are guilty of misusing Jesus in marketing too. I imagine Jesus is even more bothered about being associated with stuff like this than with a mobile phone company.

The Last Instrumental Worship Album...Ever!

I've already had a rant about the 'Best.... Ever' marketing and I'm tempted to do it all again. This kind of hype has no place in so-called 'Christian' business.

However, given the title, I can assume this will be the last ever intrumental worship CD produced by Kingsway, hot on the heels of their last ever collections of hymns, worship songs etc. After all, as Phil Groom points out, if the title really is true, then what's the point in producing anything else?

I also note that "The Best...Album in the World, Ever" is a registered trademark of the Virgin group. So if someone produced something that really was the best, they wouldn't be allowed to say so without being taken to court by Richard Branson. Nice.

For something a bit more in depth, Internet Monk is well worth a read today, looking at the whole enterprise of the 'Christian' market and the kind of things it consumes. 

Slightly more modest (actually how could anything be only 'slightly' more modest than this CD title? ) is the 'offer of the decade' from Church House, on hardback volumes from the Common Worship series. Some very hefty discounts.

Baptism Merchandise

Scouring Tesco online for some world cup themed tat*, I came across this, one of several items in their range for baptism/christening parties. Tesco are savvy enough to have tabs both for 'Baptism' and 'Christening' in their menu, even though both link to pretty much the same stuff. It's the same event, but it's called 'baptism' by church people and 'christening' by everyone else.

There's also an attempt to jump on the bandwagon of new wedding traditions by selling baptism themed 'favours' - presents that guests are given simply for turning up (? never really understood this). There's also some interesting 'table decorations', including confetti in the form of tiny crosses. It's an odd thing to be throwing about at a party, considering what it symbolises, but like baptism itself the cross has been detached from its moorings in history and meaning and has become, like St. George's flag, a 'nice' symbol to be wheeled out on appropriate occasions.

I guess it's all reasonably tasteful, but I'm slightly twitchy about it too.

* I'm looking for something to give to all the blokes in church which isn't flowers (too girly) or beer (too pricey/potentially controversial). Sunday's Fathers day talk will be on a football theme, focusing on a Dad's role as striker, defender, goalkeeper and midfielder. And the need to stay in touch with the Manager. But that's another story.

High Street Good Samaritan

The most obvious translation of the parable of the Good Samaritan into the present day is the 'have a go heroes' who intervene when someone is getting beaten up by a gang. Here is a different version of the story, involving a man on the road from M&S to WHS.....

Whilst in Yeovil WH Smiths today I witnessed an elderly gent being accosted by the Talk Talk sales team (Safety in number). They enticed him into a conversation which it was obvious he did not want.

I left them to talk for a while, I was in no doubt this gent did not have the slightest interest in the product. The sales man was still keen to keep going.Enough was enough, I intervened, I asked the gent if he wanted to know more or be free to continue on his day. The gent looked relieved.

I asked to see a manger for WH Smiths, I think I spoke to the assistant manger (no introduction or badge). Who didn’t really appear even slightly interested, he said that the sales people on the door are arranged by head office, and that they had complaints before. With a little more pressure he agreed to speak to the sales people.

Save someone from a gang of robbers today! Thinking about Christian witness on the high street, maybe a far more effective and loving 'ministry' would be to replace the open air preaching/drama/dance/thurible juggling with teams of Good Samaritans who can loiter near the people with clipboards who prowl the pedestrianised zones and shopping centres, intervening to give people the chance to walk away if it looks like they're being pressurised into signing anything.

ht Yeovil Blog.

Repeat Business

So someone came to church for the first time at Easter, or some big set-piece service. How do you encourage a bit of repeat business? The folks at Church Marketing Sucks did a bit of a survey (results right).

Of course, this is to scientific polling what newspaper headlines are to the facts on the ground. I like the idea of a cliffhanger sermon though.

The Most Unchristian Marketing in the World, Ever?

'the Best Hymns Album in the World, Ever' proclaims the label. Yes the track listing looks good, but the title fails at several points:

- what place has any Christian individual or group in claiming that what it has produced is 'the best in the world, ever'? Pride. Fail.

- the title sets the production company as judge and jury over what constitutes 'best'. Presumption. Fail

- Sure we're supposed to commend the good, but there's a difference between commending and hype. It's a vast difference if you've a financial interest in one over the other. Greed. Fail.

- On what basis is this 'the best ever'? Best collection? Best production quality? Best lyrics? 'there is a green hill' is factually pretty loose as there isn't much greenery around Jerusalem at the best of times. There is a very good chance that the claim of the title simply isn't true, and without reasonable evidence/proof, this is either misleading, manipulation, or downright deceit. It's a long way from 'let your yes be yes and your no be no'. In fact, Jesus went on to say 'any more than this comes from the evil one.'

We know that church marketing sucks, but perhaps it's worse. Is marketing satanic?

Markets Need Morals 2: the 'Christian Market'

Continuing the marketing theme from yesterdays post, have a look at this collection of Strangest Christian Products. I'm not sure what possesses people to create a pink wax Jesus, though I guess it's the prospect of a ready market.

I know lots of Christians who will try where they can to shop ethically, who give away a good slice of their income, and are generous. However it's also clear that there is a ready 'Christian market' for products, be it yet another live worship CD, or a book franchise, or a repackaged Bible. I'm probably oversensitive to marketing, but if we're going to learn to live on less, it's got to be one of the first 'professions' up against the wall. Either the industry which earns it's keep by persuading us to consume stuff we don't really need doesn't have a future, or we don't have a future.

Markets need morals. There's talk of a new moral code for banks. Wouldn't it be great if Christian business could actually lead by example? I'm sure others will have better ideas, but how about some agreed ground rules across businesses who sell to the Christian market?

For example

1. Any worship song to be recorded a maximum of 3 times on separate CD's, after which it can no longer be used on any other product. Blessed be Your Name is a cracking song, but do we really need it to be available on 10 different worship collections?

2. No author may re-use more than 25% of the title of one book in the title of another. That will avoid the recycled franchises of 'the power of a praying.....' or whatever the latest craze is.

3. A limit on the number of forms any particular idea/title can be marketed in. Thus 'What Would Jesus Do?' can only be available in 2 formats out of wristband, t-shirt, bobble hat, book, CD, exercise DVD, Bible study notes and beermat.

4. A limit on the number of formats any translation of the Bible can be made available in. We do not need 5 different holders, 4 different sizes, in pink for women, blue for men and a black metal box for teens, or 5 different variants of study bible depending on whether you have an NVQ, BSc or PhD in Hebrew. Hardback, paperback and large print seems to work pretty well for every other book on the market.

5. Bans on certain terms being used: e.g. 'the ultimate worship experience' (no, that's when you live your life in 24/7 devotion to God, read Romans 12:1), 'this book will change your life' (no it won't, though you might decide to change a few things as a result of reading it. The agent of change is normally you in partnership with God, not a wad of paper), and any comparisons with CS Lewis.

6. No Jesus dolls. None whatsoever. NO DOLLS.

any other suggestions?

Update: BanksyBoy alerts us to another example.

and Zoomtard notes the size of the turnover in Christian copyright. It's not surprising some people are tempted to try to get 'their' share, but.....

EA Games: We Can Do Better than God

Update: turns out that EA even faked a Christian protest to raise the profile of this story.

Nick Baines notes a story on EA Games, who surveyed 1000 11-16's to see what they knew of the Ten Commandments. Unsurprisingly, many couldn't name any of them.

Guess what, it's a publicity stunt to publicise Sims 3, their latest release. They're inviting gamers to re-write the 10 commandments, to see if they can improve on the originals.

And of course, it's being misreported. The survey found that those interviewed thought that most of the commandments were still relevant

Still relevant, in descending order, were: 1. Do not kill. 2. Do not steal. 3. Do not cheat on your partner with another person. 4. Do not envy others. 5. Respect your parents. 6. Do not accuse a person of something they did not do.

Pretty good for something over 3000 years old. But please don't sip your coffee before the next bit:

Found to be irrelevant to today’s British society were: Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy; Thou shalt have no other gods before me; Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image; Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

OF COURSE THEY THINK ITS BLEEPING IRRELEVANT IF YOU QUOTE IT FROM A 400 YEAR OLD TRANSLATION!

Electronic Arts suggests four replacements for the commandments deemed irrelevant, based again on results from the survey asking what respondents would do if they could “play God”: 7. Respect all people regardless of race, religion or sexuality. 8. Do not commit acts of terrorism. 9. Respect and protect the planet. 10. Do not be motivated by greed.

I'm stunned on several levels:
- That a games company somehow thinks it can do better than God.
- That the manufacturers of 'Left 4 Dead', 'Rise of the Witch King', and 'Dead Space', to name but a few, feel they're in a position to give moral guidance to anyone.
- Have another look at those new commandments. No.7 is summed up by the 6 'relevant' commands. No 8 is 'do not kill', and no 10 is 'do not covet'. That just leaves one 'new' command, which itself is a logical consequence of loving God and loving our neighbour.

And of course, EA games wouldn't want people resting on the Sabbath, they might find better things to do than buy their products, or use a plastic box to shoot aliens. Neither would they want people putting other things above God, just in case they found this whole exercise tacky, offensive and insulting.

My small collection of EA products is now going in the bin.

useful summary article here, debate here. I'll leave it to someone else to work out how many of the Ten Commandments would actually work as a Tweet, but I suspect it's nearly all of them.

Agnostibus Comments Roundup

Pretty much everyone has had their say on this, and whether Christians should be welcoming the ads or trying to get them banned, so here are a few links:

Update: more passengers on the bus:
Dave Bish is doing a talk on the campaign, and would like some ideas.

Nick Baines finds the whole thing rather cheering. Good follow up post on language, tactics, and what kind of stuff we should get offended by in the first place.

Tim Norwood sees it as a gift to preachers everywhere.

Jonathan Bartley at Ekklesia wonders if Christians should be advertising in the first place, or whether the medium distorts the message.

...and the original list....

Kouya Chronicle, "I thought that the posters on the buses were great: they got the question of faith and religion out into the public arena, which is extremely difficult to achieve in the UK"

Doug Chaplin "Stephen Green really is a pillock"

Ruth Gledhill "there will be an inquiry. What fun!"

Bishop Alan notes the similarity between the ads and a certain brand of doughnut.

The Richard Dawkins fansite is, shall we say, unimpressed with Christian Voice. To be honest, so are a lot of Christians, but more politely.

Greensboring makes a fair point: "Are these people so fragile in their faith that they can't bear the thought of even seeing the existence of other points of view?"

Vegas Cohort (ht Friendly Atheist) posts with 'how I wish more Christians would respond' "Well, what made these people feel it was necessary to put these ads on buses in the first place? Maybe its them who are striking back, at us, not starting a fight or anything. Maybe we started it... We should feel sad that we make Atheists feel like they need to defend themselves, sad that they are getting aggressive and pushy, because we caused it. We caused it because we made them our enemy ". Cracking post, Gromit.

Marketing Fundi looks at how the atheist bus campaign got off the ground, and became such a success.

Very funny photo at Sacred Sandwich.

and the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley have, surprisingly, done the maths:
according to the Sherine Principle, there's a 60% chance of God existing in England, a 100% chance in Saudi Arabia, and a 5% chance in Islington....

....so in order for not believing in God to be (on a risk/reward basis) worthwhile:

dH * L * (1-p(G)) must be greater than H(h) * E * p(G)
where dH is the difference in happiness if you don't believe in God

L = the average human lifespan
p(G) = the probability of God existing
H(h) = the happiness of heaven compared to those in a state of hell/oblivion (again, taking into account the Church of England)
E = the length of Eternity.

which pretty much sews it up.

There's Probably No Bus either

The Agnostibus campaign has gone national (it's a bit of a misnomer to call it the 'atheist bus campaign', given the slogan itself ), with £140,000 and 800 buses carrying the message to the nation, and 1000 ads on around London underground. I just love the idea of a commuter crammed like a sardine into a sweaty airless carriage thinking 'of course, the reason I'm not enjoying this is because I'm not an atheist, and the reason I'm worrying isn't because my company is about to go bust, it's because I paid too much attention in my church school assemblies'. With the debt crunch, the timing is deeply ironic.

It's been welcomed by various Christian groups, including Theos . I can't work out if they're just teasing, doing a 'love your enemies: it messes with their heads' thing, or whether they geniunely believe that more people will start thinking about issues of God and faith as a result of this. We could do with a few of the Christians also pointing out that everything in the statement is wrong, or misleading.

Well worth a read is this piece by Nick Spencer:
Let's leave aside the adverts' basic proposition, "There's probably no God". Where did that "probably" come from? It doesn't suggest the sales staff is overly confident about its product. If my pilot told me "This flight to Paris probably won't crash," I'd think about taking the train.

And let's leave aside the advice, "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". You would have to go a long way to find a slogan less suited to our New Year, recession-looming, mass-unemployment gloom. The truly wonderful thing about the campaign is that it does that most un-English thing. It mentions God in public.

I wonder how long it will be before we get bus drivers careering round corners at high speed and calling back to their passengers, as they cling despairingly to the nearest solid object, 'stop worrying and enjoy life!'


And: if you're a Christian (or Muslim, or...) bus driver, what do you do if you find the advert plastered down the side of your bus? Did any atheist drivers object to carrying Alpha ads?

Inspiration, and Dawkins Faith, (and Harry Potter)

"Stop worrying" (1 Peter 5:7)
"Enjoy life" (Ecclesiastes 9:9)

Hey, I've just thought of a really great advertising slogan for Christians to put on buses!

Drat

Blessed if you do, blessed if you don't.

Someone must have got to work on this picture in Photoshop by now......

Meanwhile, check this:

Even more jaw-droppingly, Dawkins told me that, rather than believing in God, he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet. Leave aside the question of where that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself come from, is it not remarkable that the arch-apostle of reason finds the concept of God more unlikely as an explanation of the universe than the existence and plenipotentiary power of extra-terrestrial little green men?

Melanie Phillips, on a debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox in Oxford this week. (Ht Mark Meynell). Lennox's book, 'Gods Undertaker' is a systematic, detailed, scientific (sometimes too technically scientific for this layman) demolition of Dawkins atheism - I'm most of the way through it at the moment, and it really is worth reading if you're interested in what Dawkins is saying. Reviewed here. You can watch a different Dawkins/Lennox debate here.

Update: a couple of links:

a bullet point summary of the Dawkins-Lennox debate at Thinking Matters

link to the full-length audio of a previous debate between the two at Critical Mass.

No sign of a video or audio of the Oxford debate yet.

Update Updated: Richard Dawkins has told More4 news that he's going to spend his retirement writing a book on whether fairy tales damage children. (also reported in the Telegraph, where he's identified as 'Prof Hawkins'.)

"I plan to look at mythical accounts of various things and also the scientific account of the same thing. And the mythical account that I look at will be several different myths."Of which the Judeo-Christian one will just be one of many. And the scientific one will be substantiated, but appeal to children to think for themselves; to look at the evidence. Always look at the evidence."

So the scientific account will be 'substantiated' but the Judeo-Christian account presented as 'myth'. Well, with such a fair and unbiased starting point, the little dears will clearly be persuaded of the merits of objective study. That's before they go home and burn all their Disney stuff (no bad thing in itself), fairy stories, poems, in fact, anything which involves the use of the imagination. But I hope Dawkins looks at the evidence, and if he finds that kids who are taught the Christian story are happier, healthier, more fulfilled and better citizens, then he'll come out in favour of it.

New 'Touching Base' - is there such a thing as too much choice?

Beggars and Choosers:

In a consumer, choice-driven society, the question of British identity will never be settled. Consumer choice is all about the now, but the present without the past is a place without memory, a social form of dementia as the memories which created and sustained meaning are lost.

I enjoy the freedom to choose, but choice can never fully define who we are, or be the trump card in debates about morality, science, and economics. The Christian vision of identity - people created in love in the image of God - includes free will, balanced by reason, creativity, love, community, and a sense of place within creation. (Interesting that one of the upsides to recession is that we’re told we’ll all get more creative, as we’ll no longer be able to buy a solution to everything.)

In a couple of weeks I’ll be doing my first wedding of the summer. For the happy couples, the most amazing thing is not that they have chosen, but that they have been chosen. It’s in that context that love and identity can grow to their full extent.

more at the Wardman Wire from early this afternoon.

Downsizing our Pop idols

Justin Thacker at CommentisFree has some good things to say about the recent Joseph Rowntree foundation report on social evils. The JRF concluded, from a survey of 3500 people, that the greatest social evil was individualism and consumerism.

Feeding this worship of the self were the twin gods of consumerism and celebrity culture. Consumerism feeds it because every act of consumption reinforces the idea that I exist purely for my own sake. The celebrity culture fuels it because as soon as we start worshipping people for no other reason than their ability to attract such worship then our locus of admiration has shifted from an aptitude, such as artistic ability, to the individual as an individual.

In the report, the responsibility for this plague of self-indulgence was laid squarely at the doors of politicians, financial institutions and in particular the media (understood broadly to include advertising).

Thacker goes on to ask:
What if instead we pursued the logic of satisfaction whereby our goal is not the endless pursuit of desire itself, but rather contentment with what we already have? Indeed, what if contentment was found not in satisfying new desires, but in the deliberate relinquishment for the sake of others of what we already possess? What if personal downsizing became not just the mantra, but the practice, of our age?

It is more blessed to give than to recieve.(Acts 20:36)
Godliness with contenment is great gain. (1 Tim 6:6)