| Body: | Our prophecy, The Shopocalypse, was once called “a parody” and “an act” and “blasphemous.” Now it is so actually true that it is in bad taste to repeat it. For - we Americans have shopped ourselves to death. We walk in THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEBT, and still we cannot stop – we want to shop more. We have $700 billion on our credit card, or do we have nothing at all? We're not sure.
This Shopocalypse is the end-time that the Christian-right didn't expect. They thought that Christ would rapture them up to a great mall of a thousand specialty shops in the blue sky of limitless credit. The “prosperity preachers” are stranded with their Bibles covered with spit. The congregations of Joel Osteen and Creflaw Dollar drift toward the exits. What would Jesus buy? He wouldn't. He would give.
Heaven and Hell are arrangements for our fear. We shop too much because we are afraid of death. Heaven and Hell are the most costly of all products. It is interesting to watch the Wall Street gods dragging their collapsed pile of paper away from their monumental cheap trick - back to some big math problem. If only we can solve it again, like Alan Greenspan did, for awhile– we'll be back in the Promised Land of the world's biggest economy. We'll fly up from Hell again! We'll float up like blessed angels to that Heaven where the pixilated eagles soar.
No, actually we're down here in cars, watching TV on our dash. We're speeding on cruise control across the land of The Absurd Economy. What was the idea behind all this? Everyone gorging and no-one working, only managing information? Anything new is made somewhere else? Neighborhoods destroyed by big boxes and conjob loans? Children wandering from screen to screen? Parents lost in traffic jams, deep in techno-loneliness? With the unshakable feeling of - permanent out-of-sight wars? Oh its hard to imagine the Shopocalypse's completeness. The air we breathe is changing. The sea...
Oh America! Turn! Walk sideways! Leave the product there and walk sideways! Leave the car on the shoulder. Leave the celebrity on the label. Leave the logo on the interstate. Back away from the product! Let's walk into that field, over to those trees. And sit down, and wait in silence for the life after shopping.
THE SHOPOCALYPSE Is At Hand! Yes we've shopped ourselves to death, but oh the resurrection.. fascinating.
-- Reverend Billy |
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