CONSUMERISM VERSUS THE CULTURE OF EXISTENTIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the possible difficulties that human beings (especially young people) face in finding the existential meaning in consumer society. It tries to outline answers to the following questions: Does consumerism feed the crisis of meaning in contemporary society? Do consumerist ideologies and lifestyles meet the fundamental needs of the human being or do they rather induce false needs? Doesn't it propose false clues in search of meaning, in search of happiness? Maintaining the illusion that by purchasing goods, services, experiences (as many and as expensive as possible) we gain self-esteem and respect for others, consumerism can induce a dangerous sense of self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction. After the job, or even before it, the feverish, compulsive rush for shopping has become the main concern of hyperconsumerists. Under these conditions, do they still have time and energy to search for self, otherness, the purpose of life? Isn't consumerism a real obstacle in cultivating existential (spiritual) intelligence? If consumerism through (pseudo) values, the behaviors it cultivates, supports and maintains the existential crisis, then what is to be done, how can we get out of the impasse? Could the increase of the preoccupation of the society, of the socialization factors, of each individual for the development of his own existential / spiritual intelligence be a solution?

Keywords

• consumerism
• existential meaning
• crisis of meaning
• existential intelligence