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Metrospirituality: Shopping Is a Feeling
Does buying stuff make you feel special… holy even? Do you approach cashiers and checkout counters with a nervous reverence and walk out of stores feeling like a million bucks, instead of like you just spent a million bucks?
If you answered yes to any the above, then you might be a metrospiritual, which according to Beliefnet is the “hot new trend” in religion. In case you’re not hip to lame jargon, “metrospiritual” is the latest annoying spin-off phrase from last year’s (or maybe before that) massive consumerist headache, the metrosexual.
As the Metrosexual Tarot vividly illustrates, metrosexuality was a term glommed onto by the advertising media to create an acceptable new cultural mythology for men which supported indulgence in products and practices long considered exclusively the domain of women and gay men. Whether the whole thing was actually a real trend or simply crafted by a conglomerate of cunning admen to break open the male cosmetics and clothing markets is a moot point. Because whatever it was happened. The markets changed. Television shows like Queer Eye For the Straight Guy taught men that it was okay for them too to feel ashamed about their bodies. Men the world over suddenly began buying products with a whole new gusto to make up for their God-given odors and hair growth patterns.
And now the same thing is poised to happen with religion. Whatever my dislikes for their approach, I consider Beliefnet to be a bellwether of all things spiritual in America. If they say it’s happening, then that means it has reached a critical mass, and they believe there’s money to be made in discussing it with a wide audience. And even if they’re wrong about the trends, they’ve got enough clout to make their pronouncements a reality for people who’ve long been searching for a term to describe their own unique blend of contemporary spiritual practices.
But are you a metrospiritual? I know that’s the burning question if you’ve reached this far. Before I tell you the answer, I want to stop and ask you a question: can your entire life be boiled down to a word? What if that word was crafted with the sole intention of selling products for a “holy trinity” of companies which just so happen to cater to your specific contemporary spiritual needs?
I know, I know. You don’t care, you just want me to tell you if you’re a metrospiritual. You want me to grade you and define you and label you. You’re begging for it. You’ve been trained to desire outside validation with every fiber of your being since you were a kid. And any company or advertiser who is smart enough to recognize that can come along and pick you like a piece of ripe organic fruit.
Well then congratulations, you’re definitely a metrospiritual! Yesterday you were just a garden-variety nobody interested in yoga, organic foods, ancient South American something-or-other and hybrid cars, but now you have yourself a fully-functional soon to be media-approved advertising demographic label that you can take with you whenever you go shopping to help filter out products (and entire companies) which don’t match your life-style. What a wonderful time to be a metrospiritual!
In case you’re still fuzzy about the theology behind metrospirituality, Beliefnet explains it nimbly. Metrospirituals are…
the kinder, gentler post-Yuppies who want to treat the earth and native cultures with respect, connect with their inner source and inspiration, test their bodies and expand their minds with ancient physical practices—and do it all with serious style.
And what they mean by “style” is that you put your money where you soul is, and practice your religion by sacrificing at the cash-or-charge altars of stores like Whole Foods, Anthropologie, Aveda, ABC Carpet & Home, and others. Still fuzzy about the whole thing? Well, you’re not the only one. Beliefnet’s Ariana Speyer recounts the intrigue and spiritual mysteries encountered on a shopping trip in the Mecca of Metrospirituality, Manhattan:
One of the first things to catch the eye is a waist-high white Buddha-like sculpture. Not knowing quite what it was, I asked a sales associate, who didn’t immediately know the answer, but was extremely pleasant about it. We consulted a book on Buddhas, and when that didn’t help, asked another associate, who proclaimed it Ganesh, the elephant god, being held by his mother. Whether or not this is ultimately right, does it matter? It’s Indian, it’s expensive, and a lot of people have believed in it for a very long time, probably with very good reason.
Does the metrospiritual need to know the exact genesis and meaning of every item on her personal altar? Probably not. And anyway, one can always learn. Learning, openness, and exploration are other metrospiritual cornerstones.
It’s hard for me to tell if Speyer is being tongue-in-cheek here. I hope to Ganesh that she is, but who knows. Aside from learning, openness and exploration, metrospirituals also treasure “honoring the planet, exploring, healing yourself”. Wow, sounds really, like, exploratory…
Okay now, all these attributes are positive; I don’t want to shit on that. And as hip young pastor/blogger Brian Orme writes in response to this article:
So, instead of slamming metrospirituals as superficial, maybe we should connect with metrospirituality in a way that points out the positives first—searching for spirituality is good; it’s a start. Then, just maybe, we can move into the beautiful gospel story and share the truth of the “unknown God” with people who are embedded in a spiritual-but-sometimes-godless culture…proving that there is a hope that runs deeper than a venti soy double-latte.
Not so sure that what these people need is necessarily a mythological re-branding into a kinder, gentler, cooler Christianity, but I appreciate Orme’s insistence on looking at the bright side of this trend. Exploration, learning and openness are powerful traits to carry in a spiritual quest. So is there really another level to all this than a deeply embedded marketing trojan horse?
To answer that question, Beliefnet’s article turns to the cultural paragon of deep-thinking, a college professor.
Jim Twitchell, a professor of English at the University of Florida and author of many books about consumer culture, including “Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in America” (1995), attributes the demand for luxury goods to a need for salvation or epiphany through consuming. Throughout history, Twitchell argues, “The primary deliverer of sensations was the church. That’s where you went to have an epiphany. … The sensations of luxury mirror the sensations of epiphany—the ability to give the consumer the sensation that I’ve come to the end of the line, I’m saved, I’m there, I don’t have to wrestle any more.” The metrospiritual takes luxury-buying to a new level–reaching outward for connection to the planet and to each other.
Twitchell is quite a prolific author, as is evidenced by an Amazon search under his name. According to various sources I’ve found, he’s something of a champion of the cultural power of advertising, his books tending to focus on the notion that “advertising defines our culture more than does literature”. I can’t disagree with that, but I am curious about anyone who professional book reviews claim offers a “mild defense of luxury in that its mass consumption ultimately lifts up the masses economically.”
I’ll leave that alone for somebody else to tackle, and go back to Twitchell’s above quote, in particular about the church at one time being the “primary deliverer of sensations.” I find that rather difficult to accept. Isn’t it life itself which is the “primary delivere of sensations”? Isn’t it our bodies, our sense organs, ourselves and one another who have always and (hopefully) will always be in charge of that?
The church did mediate something for us once upon a time - he’s right about that. But what was it? To me, it seems that it was in charge of the cultural story-system which was programmed into each and every person under it’s jurisdiction. The church gave us the guiding myth to pattern our lives after, and more importantly offered a way for us to ritually take part in that story through the mass and the sacraments which marked important thresholds of life.
I heartily do not agree that “the sensations of luxury mirror the sensations of epiphany,” unless it is a fun-house mirror which distorts appearances for comic effect. This analogy further breaks down when looking at the classic message of Christianity (if not always practiced by the opulent Church) - the mythic model of Jesus’ sacrifice. Jesus told us to give away our possessions if we wanted to follow him. He said he came to bring “the sword” and to upset our nice, neat, ordered, luxurious lives by asking us to make with him the ultimate sacrifice and follow him to God’s kingdom which is more awesome than any creature comforts this world could ever possibly offer - no matter how organic, or how imported, or how good and socially-conscious they make us feel to buy them.
Twitchell is right, I think, that ad agencies and multi-national corporations have taken on the role the Church once held - that of myth-makers, and story-tellers. Shopping is the sacrament in which we are allowed to ritually become one with the Mystical Body of Nike. Companies do want you to believe, as Twitchell says, that they are the “primary deliverers of sensations,” and that you can’t feel good or right or whole or strong or happy or holy without the baubles and trinkets - and fantasies - they sell you.
And speaking of selling fantasies, the Beliefnet article has quite a bold closing:
“It makes you feel good to go in the store,” Casey Williamson of Manhattan attests. “It’s more for fantasy than for shopping.” “I love coming here with my girlfriends,” Yasuko Otsue, also of Manhattan, explains. “We can spend hours… there’s an element of fantasy involved.”
And what is fantasy but a funny kind of hope? In a time of political uncertainty, natural disasters, and terrorist threats, maybe what metrospirituals are really doing is holding out the hope that, through their personal practices and purchases, they are making the world a safer, more friendly, benevolent place. And who’s to say they’re not?
Who’s to say they’re not? Fantasy is a funny kind of hope? So what we’re left believing here is that the magic of shopping is stronger than the power of evil - that if we wish hard enough, and invest enough money that all the problems of the world will go away while we happily roll our yoga mat into our hybrid car and motor off into the organic sunset? Do we really not need to actively try to make a difference in the world, when we can reverse the flow of entropy by shopping at the right stores? What drivel! What painful tedious nonsense…
Metrospiritual people of the world unite! Don’t let some company turn your quest for spiritual truth into another pathetic high-octane clean-burning marketing campaign. Take a tip from the folks at Open Source Theology, who before this article even came out offered what I think is a much healthier view on the emerging metrospiritual paradigm. A reader named Dwight offers a set of characteristics which describe metrospirituals, the first of which fits quite well with our conversation here:
A metrospiritual person… Recognizes that Stuff is only Stuff.
A person who is metro spiritual has discovered that happiness does not consist in the accumulation of things. I am not saying that to be a metrospiritual person you have to renounce all your possessions although that would not preclude you either. But what I am saying is that one no longer looks to things to bring happiness.
Metrospiritual people try to be open handed people - they keep a loose grasp on the things of life. They basically have discovered that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
If you want to live your life in accord with spiritual principles, by all means do so, and do it as fully as possible. But don’t for a second listen to the marketers who are going to tell you that where you shop and what you buy is enough. Because it’s not, and it never will be. True spiritual maturity (metro-spiritual or not) transcends all this stupid bullshit about products and social status and cuts to the heart of what matters most. And you need to determine for yourself just what that is. But please, God, please - don’t tell me it’s shopping.
Here’s a collection of blogs which continue this conversation.
- 925.M - Convert to Metrospirituality, Keep Your Masculinity
- SwineBass - Are you a metrospiritual?
- Matthew Hall on metrospirituality
- AdFreak - Gwyneth Paltrow, metrospiritual
- Blinq - Let’s get metrospiritual
- Brian Orme - Are you a metro-spiritual?
These articles seem to be using the term in a context thankfully separate from the Beliefnet article:
- Open Source Theology tackles Metro-Spirituality
- Si Johnston - Metro-Spirituality & the Emerging Church
*Note: the phrase “Shopping Is A Feeling” comes from the excellent movie by the Talking Heads, called “True Stories“.
- Ding!
- photosynthetic molecules
- Those guys’ll just shoot anybody who comes along
- Armed Dolphins On the Loose!
- Not so holy anymore
- Prev: Evil Doesn’t Become You…
- Next: The Power of Labels
November 10th, 2005 at 1:15 am
it depends how you consume religion and spirituality in the first place. if you are going to church or meditating or doing yoga as a means to accessing an endorphin high then the experience can be directly compared to the physiological, neuro-transmitter response of the puchase experience. i heard it said recently that to experience the american dream you must first go to sleep. from this somnambulistic standpoint it`s all a buzz man. the point of yoga is to get the right outfit and mat. he point of being spiritual is reading the right books, going to the right lectures and doing what richard gere does now that he`s a bhuddist. if you eat the right organic cereal you can be assured, according to the ad, that 10% of the purchase price goes toward peace. (it actually said that in the ad in the magazine. no qualifying statement. just that sentence.) i`ll take the miniwheats thanks.
November 10th, 2005 at 1:31 am
Man, I love frosted mini-wheats! Now there’s spirituality in a bowl. Alistair, didn’t you say a while back that you did counseling for people with shopping addictions? How does somebody go about re-patterning themselves to be free of that sort of thing?
November 10th, 2005 at 2:12 am
what, mini-wheats? but seriously, one approach would be to look at the way a person approaches the act of shopping from a physiological standpoint. we store emotions in our bodies, and by making shapes with our limbs, facial expressions, muscle tension, etc. we can recreate the feelings associated with those body shapes. a way to see how this works is by pretending to be apprehensive in the way an actor would portray apprehension, by cringing, crouching and moving backwards etc. to the point where the feelings come into the body and you actually experience apprehension. then an opposite emotion can be chosen. acting out victory by jumping up and down, pumping the air, yelling and screaming etc. eventually you feel like you won something. two dramatic examples of how to create artificial emotional states that are non specific and safe for most people to try as a first practice.
as the session continues more personal examples can be emulated. minor phobic response, the love for a pet, etc. this allows me to calibrate the persons unique style of storing emotions in the body. then we go directly to the behaviour we want to alter. in this case it`s shopping. i will get the person, who has now learned to go into different modes reasonably smoothly and quickly, to do thier shopping dance and fire off the feelings. i see how the body moves, the facial expressions and breathing patterns that get the client into SHOPPING mode. then i get them to show me a restrictive pattern that they do, such as driving past a police car or explaining thier spending habits to thier accountant, something that would really put them into a limiting posture and mindset. i get them to do that often enough that they can fire off the feelings at will and then i overlay the restrictive pattern onto the idea of going shopping. generally the first time there is resistance because the system knows this is the death of a pleasurable experience but with a reasoned approach the client will comply. once the restrictive pattern starts to take hold of the journey into the mall i can anchor the sensation to whatever signal the client chooses. the word creditcard is effective or merely stepping toward the mall doors with the restrictive patterns operating enough times will make the pleasurable feelings go away. it can be a sad moment but effective and as long as the client is able to continue to access the anchors(and i set up some covert ones, just in case.) they will keep mastery over the feelings. having said that, the intellect can always decide to go to the mall and overspend. that`s free will.
the pysiological response therapy is also fantastic for helping guys(and girls) to talk to people they find attractive. i`ve had some really rewarding sessions with clients that have ended up in starbucks, field testing the new brain chemistry. fucking beautiful.
November 10th, 2005 at 2:23 am
Wild. I imagine that what you’re doing is also probably a trimmed down and more free-form version of the type of high-level research and thinking that goes into marketing and sales to begin with.
I’d imagine that what you’re saying about getting people to act out pleasure-states is a major part of what companies try to trigger in consumers. If they can link their products to these pre-existing states, then they automatically link into a huge emotional and physical reserve which is what gives ads and products such power to begin with.
Taking control back into your own hands of your inner states seems to me like it should be a central part of any serious spiritual pursuit.
November 10th, 2005 at 2:42 am
control is all we can ever hope for. endorphins are incredibly powerful things. we are glandular beasts, if we don`t corral ourselves then we`ll end up in the continental suites at the sahara in vegas for as long as the money lasts.
i can certainly tell which ads will work and i`m surprised at how many ineffective ones are made for really large clients.
imagine that you could tell with absolute certainty what a person likes and how they go about liking it . you could then take the time to put your product into the shape and form that would match that person`s desires. people will tell you that stuff in precise detail. all you have to do is ask. they will tell you the colour, the model and the year. they will tell you how they see it and where in thier mind they see it, if you are paying attention. when you calibrate that you can then drop your product right in where thier favorite thing is in thier mind and they then decide to see your thing as desirable. i`ve seen little kids do precisely that to thier parents in a store. “daddy,daddy, look…..” and bang, daddy`s got his visa card out.
November 10th, 2005 at 2:54 am
oh, yes, and about spiritual states. when we have one feeling inside there is no room for any other. when we are undecided we are only in one state, not a few. indecision is actually fear. when we take control of our feelings and learn to pick emotions like an artist picks colour then we can choose to be happy for no reason. it`s like protection. it just makes such good sense these days. smile, and whether the whole world does actually smile along with you or not…..it doesn`t matter, because you`re smiling. then you can make better decisions for yourself. like making time for meditation or doing some tai chi or ride a bike or kick the speed bag or read a poem or write one. because then you`re practicing happy. and while you`re doing that all the shit stuff has to sit on the sideline.and you`re smiling, which goes inside and lets your body make powerful shapes of effective living which sets up healing and grounding and choices improve and intuition and coincedance express themselves through you and you can choose to let fear go by and wait for a better emotional bus to stop and give you a ride.
November 10th, 2005 at 3:58 am
like the shriek of a bird who’s beak has been stomped on, the spiritual instinct will express itself through whatever means it has.
November 10th, 2005 at 4:57 am
So what were left believing here is that the magic of shopping is stronger than the power of evil
Actually some people would interpret that idea as having a certain truth to it, if you read “the magic of shopping” as meaning Western capitalism and free trade and “the power of evil” as meaning Islamofascist repression and terrorism.
November 10th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
if it wasn’t so annoying, that ‘metrosexual tarot’ set would be pretty cool.
this article gets my blood boiling, but no part of it annoys me more than this utterly ludicrous list of what’s “in” in spirituality versus what’s “out.”
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/178/story_17840_1.html
apparently if you practice feng shui, drink beaujolais, shop at pottery barn or play golf you *can’t* be a “metrospiritual,” but if you go to machu picchu, surf, take wellbutrin and knit you’re *A-OK.*
sigh. just gotta sit back and ask yourself what the buddha would have said about the importance of such things.
November 10th, 2005 at 2:31 pm
Damn, Tim, this is the best entry of yours I’ve ever read. “put your money where your soul is”… brilliant.
—–
Can I just say, as a woman, how very annoyed I am at the Metrosexual trend? I don’t want to date any man who has more “product” in his bathroom than I do, or who shaves more surface area on his body than I do, or who, g_d forbid, *plucks his eyebrows*. I’m a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of girl. I don’t want a guy who dresses up every day.
November 10th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
[…]
November 10, 2005: : jpspirituality
Spirituality for Sale
Tim has a good overview of this article on Beliefnet about “Metro […]
November 10th, 2005 at 2:45 pm
[…] 10 Nov 2005 01:49 pm
Tim Boucher hits one out of the park!
Tim Boucher has written a fantastic post that excoriates “Metrospirituality,” the lat […]
November 10th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
I pluck my eyebrows. I also work for a salon spa which deals with companies such as Aveda, Guinot, and Yon-Ka. I also regularly receive manicures and facials.
Not to digress… this is an excellent post, Tim!
:)
November 10th, 2005 at 4:55 pm
I also want to say that I shop at Whole Foods, and worked there briefly a few years ago. Now when I walk into ordinary grocery stores, so much of the food seems totally inedible.
November 10th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
i cant stand labels like metrospiritual, but honestly, its the consumerist tag like “hippe,” “punk,” or other kind of pre dominant social pattern. we can thank clinton era soccer moms, american buddhists, and happy go lucky americana for this. it’s true that “market” trends are following this population segment. in whole foods they started selling “breast cancer” lip balm that supposdly donates money cancer research. these half attempts at spiritual attitudes seems similar to half cocked attitudes in the early seventys of the make-your-own-reality camps. like everything else, blame women.
(disclaimer: deliberate sexist remark to set off the moral word police “into” this sort of thing yet by the numbers supported the invasion of say, iraq, among other things)
November 10th, 2005 at 6:47 pm
What about all the people just enjoying life as is and do not require such tags and labels, yet desire a bit of spiritual influence to surround them in their day-to-day life? Say Richard Gere wants to purchase a $20,000 imported Vedic statue that had been excavated from the coasts of India?
This thread is becoming as prejudiced as those that make fun of us for being ardent believers in spirituality. Maybe they just don’t care and spend their time doing what they prefer. Which may or may not include driving their kids to soccer in a pimpin’ minivan and enjoying swapping their partners and drinking margaritas in their Jacuzzis.
Words imprison and create stereotypes just as much as they help us understand the world around us and aid in creating a order, structure, and way to interact with and navigate the chaos that is the world around us.
Just as much fun as it is to poke at men wearing makeup or whatever, I can say I have friendly acquaintances here in Edmonton, guys that work at MAC and DJ and are embroiled in the whole club culture. They love femininity. I also believe them to be über-vain, and I dislike the politics of the club kids, but I can’t persecute because I simply don’t share their current paradigm.
I can say the same about the dumbass that would pay for a statue of Ganesh and not know what it represents. But then again, this raises issues about what and how things mean to different people. Just cuz a whole civilisation attributes certain symbolic and spiritual attachments to a fat dude with an elephant head, someone might just want it because they think elephants are comforting or look neato.
November 10th, 2005 at 7:10 pm
i’m definitely a whole foods fan, but they’re really too expensive for regular shopping. we get all our veggies through an organic veggie delivery service (which is awesome and affordable).
yeah, the more i think about this silly metrospiritual thing, the more that’s what it strikes me as: silly. if people want to call themselves ‘metrospirituals,’ then whatever.
of course, i’m also getting tired of hearing people say ‘i hate *ALL* labels.’ you know what that makes you? a label-hater. why aren’t people okay with BEING something anymore?
November 10th, 2005 at 7:42 pm
That might just be the best question anybody’s asked here so far. It’s all well and good to rail against labels, but somehow tangled up in that issue I wonder is there an inability to feel comfortable settling down into a niche - into really going WHOLE HOG into being a metrospiritual or a punk or a hippy or whatever. It’s almost like our conception of social roles is so shattered that there are those of us who want to just throw them off altogether. And then people sit around wondering why they lack a sense of identity and purpose…
It makes that whole bit in the Bhagavad Gita seem pretty appealing, where Arjuna comes to understand that it’s simply his duty, the dharma of his social role to wage war and kill his family members - even though he doesn’t want to, and it feels all weird and wrong to him.
November 10th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
Fell, I don’t really see evidence of the prejudice you’re referring to. It sounds like you simply took Kylark’s comment about her own personal preferences as some kind of condemnation of your own lifestyle - which I don’t really think it is. What does it matter what she thinks? You don’t even know her, or she you - nor was she talking about you.
When did everybody get so sensitive and defensive? Or am I just imagining that?
November 10th, 2005 at 8:36 pm
Fell,
That does *not* surprise me!
November 10th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
Yes, you are.
I’m going to back away slowly from the Internet now….
November 10th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
one small point– religious symbols, like great art, are such because they transcend conscious thought, uniting the uncounscious with the cosmos. so the idea that a statue of ganesh could have some appeal to a foreigner actually makes more sense than if it meant nothing to them.
i am reminded of the argument of non-scientists using the words ‘quantum mechanics’ without knowing what it really means. it gets used cause those words have power and truth. people will borrow things in all kind of ways. we all go shopping everyday on the internet for a little bit of information, a clue, that will help us form a truth for ourselves, and i dont think many on this website mind too much if it came from mit labs, einstein, the bagavad gita, or whatever. its all fair game.
that being said, i think its important to remember that alot of conspicuous consumption is done by those ‘freshly arrived’ at security and comfort. (material that is). in a way, we are seeing some of them perhaps in heaven itself, and place they strived to get to through deprivation and poverty. i dont think its anything to worry about… look what happens to their children: often the richest kids are the ones who actually follow jesus thing and give all their stuff away. anyone notice that all those dead heads living like hunter gatherers came from security?
its important to recognize which part of the cycle people are on.
adveritising and shopping aspires to be universally understandable and compelling on the unconscious level of religion. so the comparison to religion is i think an apt one, with the caveat that shopping is crude and religion of refined. kind of like the difference between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. big stuff, small stuff, really small stuff. all important, but sometimes we are more focused on one or the other, depending on our place in history and our individual strengths and weaknesses.
November 10th, 2005 at 9:09 pm
Sorry this is probably my jumping the gun. My tone was probably over-exaggerated. What I may have meant is that regardless of the terms used, they can be harmful and beneficial, depending on one’s use. I seem to draw things out as I just write what I think and then hit Submit. I will work on curbing that.
Nothing about Kylark’s comments riled that, I like Kylark’s perspectives. Just my brain firing off diarrhea.
Uhoh
November 10th, 2005 at 10:23 pm
No problem. I probably jumped the gun by calling you out like that as well. Sorry. I guess I just feel like we’re all really close to uncovering something really big here together. Each of us brings a different piece to it, and its wild to see how it morphs and develops and strengthens through all our interactions. I’m never sure where its going, but I can feel a lot of like latent energy just underneath the surface right now - like there’s some powerful fascinating explosion just about to break forward.
Anybody else feel like that, or is this one of those “just me” things again?
November 11th, 2005 at 11:35 am
I definitely feel it. There is a definite resurgence of spirituality, and maybe in that sense this metrospiritual thing can be looked at in a more positive light, a sort of groping forward, as some people have pointed out. I feel that things are becoming very *exciting* and we’re all on the verge of putting together some very important puzzle pieces.
The spiritual waters are lapping at the levee, and they are either going to spill over, washing everybody and everything, or they are going to burst through in a torrent. (That’s just my sense of things.)