The Narcissism of Christianity & Consumerism

The narcissism of Christianity is the cornerstone upon which the global consumerist culture was built. Upon that cornerstone humanity sacrifices itself as a burnt offering to fame, fortune, power, and luxury, and all under the sheepskin of an image of itself, cast in the guise of a humble Shepard. 

Nothing could be more narcissistic than the idea that the most powerful being imaginable cares more about you specifically than virtually every other thing in the universe. Religions try to temper the extreme sense of self importance they peddle to their willing customers, in this respect, with the "belief" that a 'god' cares equally as much about every other human being (if nothing else), even though that 'god' has created an eternal hell into which he intends to throw all those who are too proud to accept such humility.

Consumerism, building upon the ethos of narcissism peddled by religions, sells its customers the very same sense of love and heaven those same customers shop for every Sunday as they file into the pews of churches around the world, like holiday shoppers looking for discount products on black Friday. The difference is that one offers it in the here and now while the other requires customers to operate on a layaway plan until they are laid to rest (at which point it is obviously too late to file any customer complaints).

Consumerism likewise mimics religion in anthropomorphizing their products into our own image, which is why Tony the Tiger is used to sell breakfast cereal, the Jolly Green giant is used to sell frozen vegetables, and the Marlboro Man is used to sell tobacco. Christianity likewise deifies a "man" named Jesus into as much of a God as any Roman or Japanese emperor, and peddles its giant cathedrals by dedicating them to its myriad saints, most of whom are all men.

Like Christianity, advertisers know that people cannot relate to anything not made in their own image, whether the product is breakfast cereal or an infinite God. So both peddle their products in the guise of man, even as they both deny they are in the business of only ever seducing humanity with its own image, and then transferring our narcissism to the products they want us to buy.

We see this in the use of the Marlboro man, which pandered to the alpha male mentality after World War II, every bit as much as every action movie hero does today, resulting in an explosion of male smokers of over 3000%. In this same way, the gods of the old religions, from the abstractions of sky and wind to the animals, could not compete with the religions that sold humanity images of themselves in the pantheons of Greece and Rome.

While selling "god" in man's image through a polytheism of products worked better than packaging such products in abstract ideas of agriculture, monotheism capitalized on the alpha male mentality by casting God as the Lone Ranger for all those who wished to see themselves as rugged and heroic individuals, fighting as much agaisnt the elements as all the evils of the world.         

And in doing so, humanity repacked god in its own image, and fell in love with it even more than Narcissus. This is why the major religions all package their ideas exclusively in the guise of human perfection, with theologians pilfering the philosophies of Greece and convincing subscribers that the abstract virtues of moderation they preached, could only bring happiness to humanity through an obsession with and excessive over indulgence in, fantasies about obtaining ever lasting life in a vacation paradise, by aspiring to be as perfect as a man-god named Jesus.