All You Need is Love
I grew up in the 60’s when radio broadcasts came out of a large stereo console and the nightly news from a black-and-white TV that filled our living room with sounds and images about Vietnam and the Beatles. I was a young boy then but still remember
feeling lonely when my dad went away on a remote military assignment leaving me, my mom, and three sisters at home for over a year. Our authors say that this is when the American counterculture began.[1] Looking back after all these years, I wonder if the Beatles were right, “All you need is love.”[2]
Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter’s, The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture, exposes the American’s need for love in their oxymoronic “I need it all, I can have it all” phenomenon that rages between consumerism and anti-consumerism. They conclude that the counterculture movement from the 60’s is a failure, an illusion, and the negative source of energy that actually feeds the Matrix, which in turn drives us to consume more out of deception and fear rather than actual need and desire.[3] This post will examine the authors work and look for connections to my dissertation research on the North American problem with spiritual warfare.
Even though I did not start my law enforcement career until 1978, the countercultural movement and the responses needed by public safety to keep the peace was in full swing. University protests, sit-ins, eco-terrorism, and abortion clinic violence comes to mind when I reflect on the countercultural events that impacted my early public safety career. In a type of reverse effect, Heath and Potter reveal how the “false media” of counterculuralism has nearly “replaced socialism as the basis of radical political thought.”[4] According to Openshaw’s review, the crucial social repair strategy of this book it to “reject the emphases countercultures place on liberation and self-realization, and to begin realigning social incentives.”[5] This is where my research on spiritual warfare connects with these popular authors.
I must say, I am so glad someone called out Freud! My fist degree was in psychology and I remember trying to apply what I learned into the lived social experiment I found in public safety, and to tell the truth, most of what I learned from Freud was rubbish. It was not until the Holy Spirit gave me some preliminary wisdom and discernment on the idea of spiritual warfare that I was able to see where the seeds of social problems really come from. Heath and Potter describe the countercultural condition as the phenomenon where freedom is achieved by “violating the symbolic codes and breaking the behavioral norms that constitute our everyday lives.”[6] I can attest, from 27 years in public safety, that the authors prophecy about the global impact of consumerism is already here.
Fast forward 40 years and the counterculture movement continues in popular movies like the Matrix Trilogy. I am not much of a movie watcher by practice anymore due to the uncensored nature of most films. However, I did connect with Reeves in the Matrix as the Christlike image who battles evil in a post-apocalyptic style presentation that depicts the world after being fully overrun by the system, evil, death, and destruction of globalized consumerism. The authors of The Rebel Sell challenge their 
readers “dare to be the same” instead of always daring to oppose, reject, and fight against the system.[7] While their challenge has merit, it does not have lasting substance. Dare to be the same with what? Instead, I would encourage them to name the structures and worldviews that point people to the life changing substance found in a social spiritualism that is established on the foundation and salvation through Jesus Christ.
Reading around Rebel Sell, as Bayard would suggest, I found an interesting commentary that cited Heath and Potter’s work and went on to describe how they see consumption in their “neo-liberal” consumer marketplace.[8] Askegaard describes consumption as not only a metaphor, but a “perspective…that at least potentially reveals rather than conceals” the consumers social practices.[9] I liken the Biblical parable of we reap what we sow principle to Askegaard’s description of the consumer condition.[10] The authors describe how “countercultural rebels have been pumping out subversive” music, art, literature, clothing, and ideas for generations.[11] Now, society is experiencing the principle of reaping what they sow. The countercultural seeds of the past are being harvested in the present with devastating global results that are driving these authors to call for positive action that reforms and improves the existing social structures that have not yet been overtaken by consumerism.
Overall, I like this book. It is out there theologically speaking, but I could still find underlying Biblical themes and principles that surfaced from the countercultural suffering and ruin described by our authors. What is the solution then? Consuming Christ as Cavanaugh suggests. Salvation then is the answer. A personal relationship with the incarnate son, redeemer, and savior Jesus Christ is the first step in reconciling the world to our creator God. Yes, the Beatles were onto something when they sang “All you need is love”, which lines up with the 2nd Commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[12]
Stand firm.
M. Webb
[1] Christopher Gair. American Counterculture. (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) 10.
[2] Ibid., 13.
[3] Andrew C. Mcwhirter. “The Matrix.” International Journal of Jungian Studies 6, no. 3 (2014): 1.
[4] Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture. (Chichester: Capstone Publishing Ltd, 2005) 17.
[5] Andrew Openshaw. “The Rebel Sell: How the Counterculture Became Consumer Culture.” Cultural Politics 2, no. 3 (2006): 396.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Heath, The Rebel, 189.
[8] Søren Askegaard. “Consumer Culture Theory – Neo-liberalism’s ‘useful Idiots’?” Marketing Theory 14, no. 4 (2014): 509.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Gal. 6:7-9 carries the thought that we reap what we sow, more than we sow, and later than we sow (Dr. Charles Stanely).
[11] Heath, The Rebel, 35.
[12] Matt. 22:39.
About the Author
Mike
4 responses to “All You Need is Love”
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Great post, Mike. I agree that the authors have fairly correctly diagnosed the problem, but have not offered a satisfying solution. You say, “Now, society is experiencing the principle of reaping what they sow.” Would you say that applies to the horrible rise in school shootings across the US? I have seen many people suggesting that violent movies and video games are sowing seeds of death. Or that the fact that God is not allowed in schools has turned schools into these death chambers.
(Aside: I’m not sure why a Christian would believe that any human power was able to keep God from any place. While public schools may not adhere to Christian teaching, God has not left the building. Besides the fact that God is omnipresent, every child who knows Christ as savior bring the Spirit of the living God to school with him or her every single day.)
And if this violence is “reaping” what the nation has sown, what should the Christian response be? I’m sure prayer is a huge part, but is there anything we should be doing and or speaking into the culture?
Jennifer,
Thanks for the comments and discernment you have on these matters. Yes, the current waves of violence are connected to the seeds of corruption our nation has sown. Since we know the end of the story already, the only temporary reprieve I see are Biblical ones similar to King Hezekiah’s prayer in 2 Kings 20:1-6 and King Jehoshaphat’s fast in 2 Chronicles 20. Hezekiah saved the nation for a time and got 15 more years added to his life. Jehoshaphat declared a national fast and turned all the people toward the Lord and the Lord protected them from the enemy.
Faith works! And God honors faith. So, unless we raise up leaders who can point the nation to the Lord, then we better “set your house in order” says the Lord (2 Kings 20:1).
Stand firm,
M. Webb
Hi Mike,
Hope this week finds you healthy and “safe”
Loved your reminder that, “we reap what we sow”! So many times the past three weeks with our readings I wanted to write about that. It is the truth, “if we sow sparingly, we will also reap sparingly.”
Great video closing, as well as your points about LOVE.
Jay,
Thanks for the review and comments! And if we sow corruption, we will reap corruption.
So sad, but a Biblical principle that is never wrong.
Stand firm,
M. Webb