Consumerism: The First Universal Religion Humans Actually Practice

If you ever stood outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York, you noticed how the glass cube rises like a minimalist temple, appearing even more ethereal than the Kaaba in Mecca.

Once you see that, it's easy to realize how millions of consumers visiting it are on a pilgrimage of sorts. Inside, the Apple logo hangs luminous at the center, elevated and spotlit like the cross in churches to draw the eye upward. Ironic how the crucifix was replaced with a bitten apple, an ancient symbol of knowledge and temptation.

New Apple devices used to feel like messianic revelations—from stage introduction to store.

Steve Jobs always looked like a departed prophet. A secular saint, who suffered for our sin of technological inadequacy. He once noted how he'd be one of the last humans to die of such a disease, and I very much share that hope. Yet, that reduces salvation to a matter of flesh and successive product generations.

It's not isolated to Apple, every brand does it: Tesla, Nike, Leica, CrossFit, Supreme. We adapted religious behavioral patterns to consumerism without acknowledging the transfer.

After Jobs, new deities emerged (even fell) from the techno-pantheon. Musk, promising Mars salvation. Altman, whose models promise vicarious omniscience. As products get mystical through LLMs, overlap with traditional religion intensifies. They offer knowledge, transcendence, soon even a simulacrum of afterlife through digital persistence.

People approach the Genius Bar with the same anxiety of my Catholic upbringing. The confession booth, reimagined: “My phone broke.” Since those devices look perfect, it's you who must have failed them as a devoted user. Repair is absolution via technical priesthood.

Products rest on pedestals, with perfect lighting painting them more beautiful than anything in your life could ever be—the same technique used in baroque churches to elevate relics and icons. In an era that lacks collective rituals, customer experience becomes liturgical: careful removal of packaging, reverent first touches, fascination by the witnesses. Transcendence comes from presentation: you gaze, you aspire—apotheosis of the tool. It's not by chance that Apple's early marketing labeled original fans “evangelists.”

In fact, almighty tools now reshape user desires until it's the user serving the tool. Like in any major religion, the devotee ends up submitting to the faith—the god. Which, in this case, is a holy trinity of Market, Product, and Technology.

I've visited Apple Stores in six countries. While each has its own architectural character, there's something familiar about the experience. The floating glass box in New York, the historic buildings in Paris, Milan, and Rome. The minimalist concrete in Tokyo. Yet, the internal liturgy remains identical. Like visiting different cathedrals within the same denomination.

Brands offer something now scarce: a complete worldview, aesthetically consistent and globally recognized. That is the real, invisible product.

When you jump ecosystems, you “convert” to Android, to iOS, to macOS, or whatever Linux flavor you crave. Everyone knows a friend who has strong opinions about it. Are you that friend?

So, the bitten apple, the evangelists, the conversion, the revelations, and the founder prophet… The bitten apple, the evangelists… “Are you getting it? These are not separate devices, this is one device.”

One religion.

What we are seeking isn't gadgets, but the meaning structure that religions provided. The most significant thing about modern consumerism isn't what it sells us, but what it asks us to believe.

Not just products improving our lives, but transcending ordinary existence through consumption. Purpose, community. Steam friends, iMessage groups. The brand narrative about reality supersedes the reality it describes.

Again: Apple is (was?) the clearest example, but the religion of consumption doesn't just transcend brands. It permeates through borders and faiths. In the 21st century, most share it: Christians and Muslims, Americans and Chinese, rich and poor.

Consumerism doesn't ask you to abandon old gods. It becomes the practical theology that governs your daily life. About 31% of humans identify as Christian, 25% as Muslim, and 15% as Hindu. But all practice product worshipification. Even atheists.

So, is Consumerism an actual religion?

It is, at least, the unconscious simulacra of it—an anti-religion of sorts.

Take Buddhism: rather than a theistic religion, it is often described as a system of belief. So are markets and products when operating as a system of meaning and practice.

For the first time in history, the world adheres to a unique system: Consumerism. Even in countries self-proclaimed “communist,” they practice capitalism of the state rather than of the private sector. Same stuff.

I find referring to people as “consumers” very offensive and reductive. “How much can you consume?”

Yet, this is the point: in the church of commerce, your primary identity is a vessel for consumption. Your worth measured in purchasing power rather than anything else, like spiritual development.

This is the final commodification: not the tool, but the spiritual value itself.

Transcendence, community, identity, purpose—extracted from their traditional contexts and repackaged as products.

In the Church of Consumerism, your soul is the product.