“The point of all this is to try to appreciate how a worldview—or better,
what philosopher Charles Taylor calls a ‘social imaginary’—is ‘carried’ in
everyday rituals and practices. How do we learn to be consumerists? Not
because someone comes along and offers an argument for why stuff will
make me happy. I don’t think my way into consumerism. Rather, I’m
covertly conscripted into a way of life because I have been formed by
cultural practices that are nothing less than secular liturgies. My loves have
been automated by rituals I didn’t even realize were liturgies. These
tangible, visceral, repeated practices carry a story about human flourishing
that we learn in unconscious ways. These practices are loaded with their
own teleological orientation toward a particular vision of the good life, a
rival version of the kingdom, and by our immersion in them we are—albeit
unwittingly—being taught what and how to love.”
-James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love