Shopping Cart Pantheism
by Jeanne Randolph
I love a short weird book but this is 85% Christianity and Freud, two topics I notoriously don't give a fuck about. I think if you title a book "pantheism" it should contain SOME kind of religious reference other than Christians and Christianity and Christian philosophy. (2-3 stray uses of "Judeo-Christian" is MORE points off, not fewer.)
A handful of tidbits that I found interesting, not sure I really deeply understood how they fitted into the argument because, see above, don't care enough.
- post-apocalyptic regression - a culture absolutely losing its balance after a series of major apocalypses. Even more relevant now than it was when this was written (2009?) and published (2015).
- "the human psyche is a system , a system like hydraulics: 'force that is applied at one point is transmitted to another point using an incompressible fluid.'"
- "'A society which says for itself the goal of increasing is supply of good will tend, inevitably, to identify all innovation with addition to, changes in, or increase in the stock of goods.'" Made me think about eco-consumer products, which is not what author was talking about.
Oh but by the end it becomes clear that despite all this chatter about leaning into consumerism as a religion, Randolph actually DOESN'T buy the stuff she's obsessed with (random plastic shit in Japan was her example I think?) and actually her watch is from a thrift store in the 1970s and her hankie from her grandma and she's actually really cool and not wasteful or problematic!!
1.5 rounded down to 1 because it's a fairly pointless book and I don't rec it, not out of particular animosity.