Missions Resources - Bibliography
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic
Authors: John De Graaf, David Wann, Thomas Naylor
ISBN: 1576751511
Publisher: San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publisher, Inc.
Number of pages: 268
Type of cover: Hard Cover
Summary:
"Affluenza" is a made-up disease, a coverall term coined by the authors of the book to describe the multitude of ways Americans are negatively affected by our highly prosperous economy. Most of these issues are not new to the Church; in fact, Christians are given much respect in a forum where they are usually held in a measure of contempt.
These "symptoms" include:
- Addiction to noise - in shopping, in eating, in conversation, in entertainment - and a corresponding emptiness of the soul (Don DeLillo in White Noise argues the opposite: that the emptiness of the American soul is the cause of our pursuit of noise);
- Bankruptcies are at an all-time high in the U.S., precisely at a time when prosperity is higher than imaginable to our grandparents;
- Our families are ever more broken;
- We don't know our neighbors, we're not involved in our communities [or InterVarsity Chapters -ed.], and we don't vote;
- We are spending more time in commuting, and in traffic jams, than we are with our families;
- We are not in touch with the natural environment: one in ten Americans can identify six tree species;
- Market "self-regulation" has led to a range of toxins and poisons in our food; human breast milk would be illegal if it were cow milk, because of the synthetic chemicals in our bodies.
But the book Affluenza is about more than doom-and-gloom. The above are detailed in the first third of the book. The middle section relates some historical causes, and the final section lists possible ways out.
This is required reading on many college campuses, but I recommend it highly to anyone else.
- Paul Grant, writer/editor for urbana.org
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