1 / 20

Swimme Slide Show

Dive into Swimme's cosmology of consumerism and its effect on our beliefs. Explore spiritual emptiness, faith, and the unconscious mind in relation to material consumption.

lfowlkes
Download Presentation

Swimme Slide Show

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Swimme Slide Show HMXP 102 Dr. Fike

  2. Vocabulary • promulgate • cosmology • recalcitrant

  3. Introduction • My former students thought that blacks are not disadvantaged, that women are pretty much equal to men, and that their own relationships were not dysfunctional. 

  4. In other words… • They saw themselves as exceptions to the situations described by DuBois, Gilligan, Belenky (in a previous ed.), and Hemingway. • They also thought that ads had not affected them. 

  5. Writing in Class • Do you believe that ads affect you?  • If not, are you like the white people whom McIntosh talks about (affected but unaware of the effect)?  • How many of your are WEARING ads today? • Are you here at Winthrop University to enable yourself to get more stuff? • Write for 5-7 minutes about your personal connection to the reading for today. • Discuss your answers with the class.

  6. Group Work • Work in small groups to identify main points and key passages on one of Swimme’s pages. • What is his thesis statement? • What are his main points? • What passages did you mark? • Each group takes one page of Swimme’s text.

  7. Question • Why is consumerism so effective? Many answers are possible. What do YOU think? What does Swimme think?

  8. Possible Answers Main Answers • We are intellectually lazy (). • Consumerism is a religion/cult (). • Americans are spiritually empty. Consumerism fills the void (). • Consumerism affects our unconscious minds (). • We are alienated from ourselves and from objects of production (). • We have lost a sense that consumerism has environmental consequences () Other Answers • Advertising saturates our culture. • And once we embrace consumerism, we are never satisfied with any thing. Dissatisfaction.

  9. Intellectual Laziness • "We learned to accept it [consumerism] so long ago we hardly ever think about it anymore" (122, right top). • "The fact that consumerism has become the dominant world faith is largely invisible to us..." (124, right, full par. 1). 

  10. Consumerism AS Religion? • Is consumerism really a religion or cult?  • What are the implications of claiming that it is?  • Do you agree with Swimme's definition of faith?  "Faith is that which a person holds to be the hard-boiled truth about reality" (123, right bottom).

  11. Spiritual Emptiness/Alienation • Are you really not alienated, or are you just passive and not self-aware?  Or are you self-aware without having experienced alienation? • When you watch the following Superbowl ad, do you enjoy it? When you really think hard about the ad, does its appeal suggest that you are emptier than you may have realized? • http://sports.aol.com/nfl/superbowlads

  12. Amplification: More on Jesus • Do you agree that there is no authentic spiritual development today?  Many of you consider yourselves to be Christians, but does consumerism becloud your commitment to Christ?  Consider Jesus's statement to the guy who asks what he has to do to be saved:  Mark 10:21 GWT: “Jesus looked at him and loved him. He told him, ‘You're still missing one thing. Sell everything you have. Give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then follow me!’”

  13. Homology • If Jesus conveys religious/spiritual truth, who in the realm of material consumption conveys the message that we cannot be happy with what we have? • Jesus is to Christianity as ______________is to consumerism? 

  14. The Unconscious Mind • “The last thing we want to think about as we’re lying on the couch relaxing is the philosophy behind the ad. So as we soak it all up, it sinks down deep in our psyche” (123, left bottom).

  15. Environmentalism • http://www.storyofstuff.com • What points arise from this little presentation?

  16. Possibilities • The Bible states that one cannot love God and Mammon (wealth). • Is it possible to embrace consumerism and still be a good person? • Can one still be an "ideal human" (124,  left middle)? • Do you agree that consumerism distracts us from goodness, love, wisdom, and justice?

  17. Transition • So far, we have examined the bad news. • Let’s look now at the good news.

  18. Good People: “ideal human”? • Whom does Swimme admire?

  19. Good People • Rachel Carson • Jesus • Socrates • Martin Luther King • Confucius • What do these people have in common? • Does Swimme put himself in the same category?

  20. Swimme’s Solution • What does it mean to say "that we live within a sacred universe“ (124, last sentence)?  • In other words, what is "the new cosmology" that Swimme advocates in his final paragraph? • What does this mean for YOU? END

More Related