What greed and instant gratification look like: Inside a Georgia Wal-Mart on Black Friday

Through­out the past week, in hon­or of Thanks­giv­ing and in protest of Black Fri­day, we’ve been tak­ing a crit­i­cal look at exces­sive con­sumerism and the con­se­quences it por­tends for our­selves as a soci­ety and plan­et Earth.

We’ve cov­ered the plight of Wal-Mart’s under­paid and poor­ly treat­ed work­ers (some of whom have gone on strike), talked about the tremen­dous envi­ron­men­tal dam­age that’s been caused by our “use it up and throw it out” cul­ture, and expressed our dis­plea­sure with major retail chains like Tar­get for mak­ing employ­ees come into work on Thanks­giv­ing instead of observ­ing the holiday.

But noth­ing we’ve pub­lished so far this week sums up how we feel about Black Fri­day as ably as these videos, which were shot inside of a Wal-Mart in Moul­trie, Geor­gia ear­li­er today. 

The videos depict peo­ple shov­ing, push­ing, and scream­ing inces­sant­ly at each oth­er as they scram­ble to get their hands on a crate full of smart­phones (pre­sum­ably being sold by Wal-Mart at very low prices).

It’s an ugly, pathet­ic, and embar­rass­ing scene. This is appar­ent­ly what we’ve been reduced to: a soci­ety so obsessed with greed and instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion that we’re will­ing to toss patience, polite­ness, and com­mon cour­tesy out the win­dow for hand­held com­put­ers ensconced in bright­ly-col­ored boxes.

What stood out to me as I watched the footage was the peo­ple shown turn­ing back into the crowd with mer­chan­dise in hand, eager to push oth­ers out of their way in their hur­ry to get to the check­out line (or per­haps to snag oth­er items for sale).

To me, the behav­ior cap­tured in these videos sym­bol­izes the self­ish, uncar­ing atti­tude so many peo­ple seem to have these days. There’s so much scream­ing and yelling in this video that I can’t make out any coher­ent dia­logue. But the body lan­guage is clear: I’ve got mine, now get out of my way! 

What­ev­er hap­pened to humil­i­ty? Good­will towards oth­ers? Has con­sumerism so con­sumed us that we’ve for­got­ten the mes­sage of time­less works about the true mean­ing of the hol­i­day sea­son — like Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol?

Those of us who con­sid­er our­selves to be Chris­tians would do well to remem­ber what Jesus said about the accu­mu­la­tion and wor­ship of world­ly pos­ses­sions. Like this pas­sage from the Gospel of Matthew:

Do not store up for your­selves trea­sures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up trea­sures in heav­en, where nei­ther moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your trea­sure is, there also will your heart be.

— Matthew 6:19–21

Or this pas­sage from Luke:

Some­one in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my broth­er to share the inher­i­tance with me.” He replied to him, “Friend, who appoint­ed me as your judge and arbi­tra­tor?” Then he said to the crowd, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not con­sist of possessions.”

— Luke 12:13–15

More than a decade ago, our good friend John de Graaf sought to give a name to our mod­ern epi­dem­ic of greed and instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. He came up with affluen­za, which he defined as “a painful, con­ta­gious, social­ly trans­mit­ted con­di­tion of over­load, debt, anx­i­ety, and waste result­ing from the dogged pur­suit of more.”

Affluen­za is par­tic­u­lar­ly bad this time of year — and has been since before the turn of the cen­tu­ry. As de Graaf writes in the first chap­ter of the book of the same name:

Most Amer­i­cans tell poll­sters they want less empha­sis on hol­i­day spend­ing and gift-giv­ing. A third can­not even remem­ber what they gave their sig­nif­i­cant oth­er the pre­vi­ous year, and many can­not pay off their Christ­mas debts until the fol­low­ing sum­mer, if then. Yet the urge to splurge con­tin­ues to surge. It’s as if we Amer­i­cans, despite our inten­tions suf­fer from some kind of Willpow­er Defi­cien­cy Syn­drome, a break­down in affluen­za immunity.

And it’s only get­ting worse. Wal-Mart is tri­umphant­ly claim­ing tonight that this year’s Black Fri­day sales were the strongest the megachain has ever had. It seems the urge to splurge is more pow­er­ful than ever.

And no won­der: Just look at how heav­i­ly “Black Fri­day” has been pro­mot­ed on the news and in tele­vi­sion, radio, print, and Inter­net adver­tis­ing. Amer­i­cans have been con­stant­ly encour­aged to go shop­ping for weeks, and mil­lions did just that, think­ing today was the day to score the best deals (except it was­n’t, as we know thanks to research by out­fits like Decide.com).

Mod­ern mass media equiv­o­cates the pur­suit of stuff with the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. But stuff — whether it’s elec­tron­ics, cars, clothes, toys, big hous­es, or any­thing else — won’t make us hap­py. We believe true hap­pi­ness comes from liv­ing a pur­pose­ful live, from alle­vi­at­ing suf­fer­ing, from learn­ing to be self­less, and from improv­ing the human con­di­tion. That’s why our objec­tive, as an orga­ni­za­tion, is to raise Amer­i­ca’s qual­i­ty of life. We all do bet­ter when we all do better.

And we can start doing bet­ter by reject­ing the unsus­tain­able tenets of con­sumerism in favor of the val­ues that have made our nation great.