Shopping for Meaningful Lives

Shopping for Meaningful Lives PDF Author: Bruce P. Rittenhouse
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1620321149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Consumerism is a problem. It deforms individual character, our sense of obligation to one another, and our concern for future generations and the environment. Even in the aftermath of the worst economic downturn in seventy years, it remains a defining feature of Western cultures. But, beyond this assessment, neither Christian theologians and ethicists nor secular economists and sociologists have understood what drives consumerism or what can be done to counteract it. This is the problem that Bruce P. Rittenhouse solves in Shopping for Meaningful Lives. Dr. Rittenhouse analyzes economic, sociological, and psychological evidence to prove that consumers behave differently than the current theories predict.Dr. Rittenhouse shows that consumerism functions as a religion. It provides a means of assurance that an individual life is meaningful. Because we need this assurance to live out our everyday lives, consumerism takes precedence over whatever other values a person professes--unless a person can adopt a different way to secure the meaning of his or her life. This interpretation explains how consumers actually behave. From the perspective of Christian theology, consumerism is a wrong answer to a problem of human existence that should be answered by faith in Christ.

Shopping for Meaningful Lives

Shopping for Meaningful Lives PDF Author: Bruce P. Rittenhouse
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1620321149
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Consumerism is a problem. It deforms individual character, our sense of obligation to one another, and our concern for future generations and the environment. Even in the aftermath of the worst economic downturn in seventy years, it remains a defining feature of Western cultures. But, beyond this assessment, neither Christian theologians and ethicists nor secular economists and sociologists have understood what drives consumerism or what can be done to counteract it. This is the problem that Bruce P. Rittenhouse solves in Shopping for Meaningful Lives. Dr. Rittenhouse analyzes economic, sociological, and psychological evidence to prove that consumers behave differently than the current theories predict.Dr. Rittenhouse shows that consumerism functions as a religion. It provides a means of assurance that an individual life is meaningful. Because we need this assurance to live out our everyday lives, consumerism takes precedence over whatever other values a person professes--unless a person can adopt a different way to secure the meaning of his or her life. This interpretation explains how consumers actually behave. From the perspective of Christian theology, consumerism is a wrong answer to a problem of human existence that should be answered by faith in Christ.

Making Meaningful Lives

Making Meaningful Lives PDF Author: Iza Kavedžija
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812251369
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
What makes for a meaningful life? In the Japanese context, the concept of ikigai provides a clue. Translated as "that which makes one's life worth living," ikigai has also come to mean that which gives a person happiness. In Japan, where the demographic cohort of elderly citizens is growing, and new modes of living and relationships are revising traditional multigenerational family structures, the elderly experience of ikigai is considered a public health concern. Without a relevant model for meaningful and joyful older age, the increasing older population of Japan must create new cultural forms that center the ikigai that comes from old age. In Making Meaningful Lives, Iza Kavedžija provides a rich anthropological account of the lives and concerns of older Japanese women and men. Grounded in years of ethnographic fieldwork at two community centers in Osaka, Kavedžija offers an intimate narrative analysis of the existential concerns of her active, independent subjects. Alone and in groups, the elderly residents of these communities make sense of their lives and shifting ikigai with humor, conversation, and storytelling. They are as much providers as recipients of care, challenging common images of the elderly as frail and dependent, while illustrating a more complex argument: maintaining independence nevertheless requires cultivating multiple dependences on others. Making Meaningful Lives argues that an anthropology of the elderly is uniquely suited to examine the competing values of dependence and independence, sociality and isolation, intimacy and freedom, that people must balance throughout all of life's stages.

Not Buying It

Not Buying It PDF Author: Judith Levine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743269365
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This cold-turkey confession by an award-winning journalist follows her progress--and inevitable relapses--over an entire year of not spending.

Doing Valuable Time

Doing Valuable Time PDF Author: Cheshire Calhoun
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190851864
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Having a future, leading a life, and spending time -- Geographies of meaningful living -- Taking an interest in one's future -- Motivating hope -- What good is commitment? -- Living with boredom -- On being content with imperfection

Heaven All Around Us

Heaven All Around Us PDF Author: Simon Carey Holt
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 149827885X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
If living with a deep awareness of God in our lives is important, how do we do it without moving to a monastery? How do we discern and respond to God amidst the places, routines, and relationships of our everyday lives? In this book, we go in search of God’s presence in homes and neighborhoods, supermarkets and sporting arenas, workplaces and weekends. Along the way we look for practices that can lead us more deeply into the way of Jesus: activities like cooking and laundry, walking and sleeping, shopping and conversation with friends. Throughout, we want to better understand how to make God a central part of our lives, and to hear Jesus’ call to “follow me” more clearly in the world around us.

Sacred Consumption

Sacred Consumption PDF Author: Peter Mundey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498591620
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
How does consumerism function as a quasi-religion in America, and how does the Christian faith interact with the consumerist pseudo-faith? Answering these questions is the focus of Sacred Consumption: The Religions of Christianity and Consumerism in America. Peter Mundey draws on both quantitative and qualitative data to explore how habitually consuming nonessentials is sacred in American culture and how the Christian sacred interacts with such consumption. Mundey unpacks the history of American consumerism and the creeds of consumerism. Christian creeds related to both consuming and financial giving are also discussed, illuminating the ways that Christianity can fuel, resist, and passively ignore consumerism. Mundey’s emphasis throughout is to enumerate the underlying cultural ideology derived from both Christianity and consumerism that partially makes and shapes American consumers.

The Day the World Stops Shopping

The Day the World Stops Shopping PDF Author: J.B. MacKinnon
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062856049
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Consuming less is our best strategy for saving the planet—but can we do it? In this thoughtful and surprisingly optimistic book, journalist J. B. MacKinnon investigates how we may achieve a world without shopping. We can’t stop shopping. And yet we must. This is the consumer dilemma. The economy says we must always consume more: even the slightest drop in spending leads to widespread unemployment, bankruptcy, and home foreclosure. The planet says we consume too much: in America, we burn the earth’s resources at a rate five times faster than it can regenerate. And despite efforts to “green” our consumption—by recycling, increasing energy efficiency, or using solar power—we have yet to see a decline in global carbon emissions. Addressing this paradox head-on, acclaimed journalist J. B. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stopped shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption to earth-saving levels without triggering economic collapse? At first this question took him around the world, seeking answers from America’s big-box stores to the hunter-gatherer cultures of Namibia to communities in Ecuador that consume at an exactly sustainable rate. Then the thought experiment came shockingly true: the coronavirus brought shopping to a halt, and MacKinnon’s ideas were tested in real time. Drawing from experts in fields ranging from climate change to economics, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to gain: An investment in our physical and emotional wellness. The pleasure of caring for our possessions. Closer relationships with our natural world and one another. Imaginative and inspiring, The Day the World Stops Shopping will embolden you to envision another way.

Christian Ethics

Christian Ethics PDF Author: Stivers, Laura, A.
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608338614
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
"The fifth edition of this classic introduction to Christian ethics via the case method approach, utilizing case studies of contemporary ethical issues"--

A New Era of Consumer Behavior

A New Era of Consumer Behavior PDF Author:
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 1803561823
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The complexities of consumer behavior call for comprehensive and detailed analytical studies. The need for both businesses and academics across the world to understand the behavior of consumers in crisis situations has been clearly illustrated by the Covid pandemic. A New Era of Consumer Behavior - In and Beyond the Pandemic presents research on both theoretical and practical aspects of this topic in three sections: “Digital Shifts in Consumer Behavior”, “Digitalization of Consumer Behavior in the Tourism Sector” and “Consumer Protection and Sustainability”.

The Sacraments and Consumer Culture

The Sacraments and Consumer Culture PDF Author: Timothy Brunk
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0814685323
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
2021 Catholic Media Association Award first place award in sacraments What does consumerism have to do with the sacraments? We live in cultures where our senses of meaning, identity, and purpose are often found in what we purchase. Apart from the question of hedonism, there is the question of how we orient ourselves in an environment in which we end up marketing our very selves. In this book, Timothy Brunk examines how this consumer culture has had a corrosive effect on the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. He also assesses how sacramental worship can provide resources for responsible Christian discipleship in today’s consumer culture.