Shopping is America’s true national pastime,

and not just during the holidays

- which simply exacerbate the condition

Like our other pastimes

- football, gambling, drinking, porn -

shopping can change

from guilty pleasure to nasty addiction

The American public has been inundated by

an unending parade of commodities and

fabricated television spectacles that keeps it

preoccupied with the ideals and values of consumerism

Consumerism is the myth that the individual

will be gratified and integrated by consuming

Consumerism offers only short term ego-gratification

for those who can afford the luxury

and frustration for those who can't.

Shopaholics United [Original]

Shopping is America’s true national pastime, and not just during the holidays. The holidays simply exacerbate this condition.

And like our other pastimes - football, gambling, drinking, Dancing with the Stars - shopping can turn on a dime from guilty pleasure to nasty addiction.

Studies show that as many as 17 million Americans—more than one in 20—can’t control the urge to shop, even at the expense of job, marriage, family, or finances.

America has become Consumerstan.

Even on those rare occasions when uber consumers take a break from shopping to participate in a quaint activity called reading, many apparently read about shopping.

Confessions of a Shopaholic, the first book in the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella, has received a whopping 806 customer reviews on Amazon.com as of the writing of this article.

The real surprise is that 806 people took the time away from shopping to write a book review. I guess they were mostly written during one of those three am/ dark night of the soul/ can’t sleep-but-can’t-shop interludes.

Oh, but how silly of me to think one can’t shop at three in the morning. There’s always online shopping, of course.

And then there are the 24-hour pharmacies and supermarkets.

And let’s not forget the early morning hours of the biggest shopping day of the year: the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday.

This year, Toys'R'Us nationwide opened at 5am, Macy’s opened at 6am, and some stores opened their doors for the Midnight Madness stampede of bargain hunters.

And madness it was. In Massachusetts, drivers created a four-hour traffic jam trying to get to Wrentham Village Premium Outlets.

And when many shoppers finally arrived, they had to create their own parking spaces on the grass because all the available spots were already taken.

At Alderwood Mall outside of Seattle, midnight shoppers could not get past each other, they were packed in so tight.

Similar stories abound about malls around the country. In fact, the number of shoppers Thanksgiving weekend totaled 147 million—that’s approximately half the American population!

Naturally, shoppers should take advantage of bargains. Who wants to pay retail? But, are reduced prices worth the cost?

Consumers aren’t the only ones paying dearly for bargains. Around half of American workers shopped while at work on Cyber Monday, the online world’s equivalent of Black Friday, resulting in a corporate condition that strikes fear in the hearts of executives everywhere: lost productivity.

As if the problem of shopaholism isn’t serious enough among Americans, we’re now attracting people with the same disease from across the pond.

With the dollar at a record low, Brits and Europeans are flocking to our shores—not to take in the bright lights of Broadway or to celebrate one of Europe’s finest (Rembrandt) currently on exhibit at the Met—but to crowd the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue or even board buses to suburban malls.

On a personal note, I must admit that ever since that damned book French Women Don’t Get Fat came out, I’ve harbored a grudge against those slim hipped, cigarette smoking, small-portion eating, fast-walking chic Parisians, and, now, if they’re going to flaunt their fashion sense in Jersey, then we really must seal our borders.

Shopping, for lack of a better word, is evil. Still not convinced? How about the 21 million toys from China recalled this year due to the use of lead paint and, in some cases, a chemical that turns into the date-rape drug when ingested?

Consume or Die!

The American public has been inundated by an unending parade of commodities and fabricated television spectacles that keeps it preoccupied with the ideals and values of consumerism.

Consumerism is the myth that the individual will be gratified and integrated by consuming.

Consumerism offers only short term ego-gratification for those who can afford the luxury and frustration for those who cannot.

The egocentricity of Western society made it an easy target for the transition to a consumer society.

As deceptive advertising and academic nihilism gutted culture of its subjectively realized values, the public was easily swayed onto the path of consumerism.

The reduction of cultural values to economic worth has produced a situation in our 'enlightened' society where product availability, as opposed to survival needs, becomes ethical justification for political oppression.

Mass media perpetuates the myth of consumerism as a priority of the New Capitalism. As America settles into its nightly routine of television viewing, corporate profiteers are quick to substitute the lure of material luxury and consumer gratification for the fading spirit.

Media advertising sells an image -- an empty shell. Corporate America placates its flaccid public with despiriting pastiche. There is only fraudulent illusion.

Instead of Swiss clockworks encased in hand carved hardwood, the consumer is offered a cheap imitation of routed particle board and computer chip technology. Who cares as long as it looks good?

In its duplicitous plot to throttle the public, corporate policy assumes only the self-interested exploitation of the consumer market and environmental resources.

In corporate (monopolistic) capitalism the consumer is a target -- he is acted upon. Controlling interests commodify culture and sell it to a public weaned on media advertising.

Selection is reduced, not to what the public wants, but to what it will accept at a greater profit for the stockholder.

This includes the availability and variety of commodities as well as their quality. Our choices and freedoms are limited by corporate policy.

As we become acclimated to life around the television set, collectively striving for a media-produced image, our choices are made for us.

Choice is reduced to brand name. We sacrifice self-knowledge for consumerism. Consumerism, like communism and fascism, is a secular religion restricting freedom of choice.

Beneath its smug persona lies an insecure America striving to fill an image projected in media advertising. Self-awareness and self-worth have been distorted. We are what we wear.

In the New Capitalism's seduction of the television audience, the individuating personality identifies with advertising fantasies and consumer ideals.

Who we are merges with roles and images portrayed in the media. Ever so subtly we are losing our ability to act independently of the justifications of consumerism.