Subvert Consumerism: Trade as One

My friend Nathan George has launched a truly important initiative called tradeasone.com. It is about subverting consumerism.
Consumerism is the notion that the more we consume the better off we will be. As I explain in Everything Must Change, it’s the supreme idolatry of our times. It places my temporal wants at the center of my own little universe. As the dominant way of deriving meaning, it is responsible for countless neuroses fed by corporations whose shareholders insist on ever-increasing profits, and it is responsible for near runaway exploitation of this earth’s natural resources.
Is it possible to subvert consumerism, to inject a virus into it that causes us to slow down, consider the needs of others, whilst at the same time redefining our place in the world? I believe it is. Fair Trade or ethical buying is a movement that attempts to do just that.
That’s why I hope you’ll check out Trade as One. They’re using fair trade as a means to mutually benefit the poor, the sick and the enslaved as well as meeting our needs. The poor need jobs, not just handouts. Through trade we can become aware of the needs of people in some of the darkest places in the world. I love Trade as One’s mission, and perhaps just as important, everyone I have heard from love its products too. What better time than this Christmas when so much gift buying is so meaningless, to buy a gift that gives a job to someone with HIV in Kenya, to a woman taken from human trafficking in Thailand or to a genocide orphan in Rwanda?
Through our tour, we hope to awaken churches around the country to their role as thought and practice leaders in compassionate commerce. Everything must change. With Trade as One, we harness a very powerful engine of change – commerce, and we subvert a very powerful engine of destruction – consumerism. I hope you’ll check out this tremendous ways to be part of a revolution through Trade as One and through registering to be part of the Everything Must Change Tour.