A Nation of Sell Outs

Hollywood power couple Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have been redefining what superstardom looks like over the past few years. Rather than focus on producing great films, Reynolds and Lively have been dedicated to producing their own consumer products. As they promote everything from Aviation gin to Blake Brown Shampoo, the two are now more accurately labeled influencers and brand ambassadors than actors. Even movie projects about serious subjects such as domestic abuse have become means to hock their merchandise.  And while they have faced some push back from fans, for the most part they are seen as a model for which to aspire.

It wasn’t always this way. As my fellow Gen Xer Meghan Murphy explains, this type of thing used to be widely derided.

When I was young, the idea of “selling out” was shameful and shamed. When a band did it, you lost respect for them, you didn’t say, “Wow, you’ve really got to respect their business acumen.” When The Beatles' song, "Revolution," was used in a Nike ad (without the band’s blessing) in 1987, people freaked out: “When rock idealism met cold-eyed greed,” The Chicago Tribune described it.

The reason we didn’t like it, of course, is that much of that 70s and 80s music was ostensibly written and performed as a condemnation of crass consumerism and centralized power. They were supposed to be fighting The Man, and to have their music used by that sinister force was deceitful and hypocritical.

However, as Murphy goes on to explain, this sentiment no longer exists among the younger generations.

It’s not just that millennials and Gen Z don’t see a problem with selling out, but they celebrate it. 

A woman who commodifies her body and sexuality for profit on OnlyFans is not selling her soul, she’s make smart financial decisions. The influencer who creates a fake life and persona online for brand deals simply has a talent for content creation, and is taking advantage of the market. Speaking of, “content creation” is a thing. Just content. Any content. The point only being that it gets clicks.

Nothing that seems humiliating and soul-killing to me, from selling myself online to strange men to having to create a narrated reel every time I go out for dinner or go on vacation, is a second thought to the younger generations. It’s almost natural to them, though of course none of it is natural, if we take “natural” to mean real, genuine, or authentic. It’s all contrived. It’s all an illusion. It’s all forced and fake — offering nothing but wasted minutes of your life.

How did it come to this?

Well, start with the fact that Murphy’s critique assumes that art should have meaning, and that being real, genuine, and authentic are objective values worthy of pursuit. Unfortunately, for the last several decades, we have been teaching students that the universe is meaningless and that there is no such thing as objectively real or genuine. Rather than teaching our youth to conform their lives to the good, true, and beautiful (and produce art that lines up with those standards), we have drilled into their heads that and that the only thing that matters are their subjective choices, and the only choice that will make them feel better about their otherwise empty lives is to use their “freedom” to chase after sex, money, and power.

Within this context, “selling out” isn’t right or wrong; it simply isn’t a thing. Condemning someone for selling out requires moral categories, and such categories don’t exist within the contemporary postmodern worldview. There is no such thing as fake, there is only “my reality;” there is no such thing as lying, there is only “public relations” and “spin.” As such, everything is permissible in the pursuit of our goals. That’s why kids today don’t know what the term selling out even means.

Is this a big deal? Yes, and it goes much deeper than just having to put up with a few more product placements in movies and sponsored Instagram posts.

To make that case, let’s start by comparing the current philosophical outlook with the traditional Christian understanding of reality.

Within the classical Christian worldview, “selling out” involves compromising integrity and betraying objective, eternal principles in exchange for temporal, worldly benefits. Selling out can take a more active or passive form. On one hand we might proclaim something we know to be false or do something we know to be wrong in exchange for things like money and power. On the other hand, we might stay silent and still in the face of lies and evil in exchange for the same type of “benefits.”

For example, two of the most famous sell outs of all time are found in Jesus’s passion narrative. In the active category, Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. Then, in the passive category, Peter denied that he knew Jesus rather than face persecution. Both men had been close disciples of Jesus, avowed and open about their association with him. However, they both turned their back in exchange for worldly benefit. And while Peter thankfully repented, both men remain archetypal representatives of sell outs.

The reason we used to denigrate sell outs in the West is that we knew and valued these stories. Indeed, Dante put Judas at the very deepest level of Hell. That harsh judgment wasn’t incidental. Historically, sell-outs have been considered the lowest of the low.

For example, turncoat government agents that spy in exchange for cash and position have been treated with utter contempt and generally given the death penalty. (The other inhabitant of the Ninth Circle of Hell is Brutus.) Having promised to serve the public good, they served themselves and the enemy.

Following the same principle, we used to despise politicians who promised to be humble civil servants and then took bribes that influenced their policy decisions. Shady used car salesman (and “snake oil” salesmen of all kinds) who knowingly hide the truth from customers in order to get a check have always been low on our social respectability scale because they trade their integrity for profit.

It is within this context that we negatively judged sell outs of all kinds, including the pop culture examples at the beginning of the article. However, by abandoning the Christian worldview, we have opened ourselves up to a culture that now accepts sell outs of all kinds. It’s not just actors and musicians, now we embrace deceit and hypocrisy at all levels of society, but rather than call it deceit and hypocrisy, it’s just “the way society works.”

For example, look at the political options we are faced with this year. Both parties are filled with corrupt liars, hypocrites, and con artists. Now, you might say that politicians have always been that way. True, but at least they used to try to hide it. Today they celebrate those qualities.

On top of that, today’s political tribalism has essentially made selling out a pre-requisite for living and working in America. By that I mean, as a traditional, orthodox Christian believer, one must either abandon certain moral teachings of the Church or be completely silent about them in order to peacefully take part in society.

For example, in order to work in mainstream media, public education or most major companies in the United States, you have to either embrace or remain silent about the various sexual depravities promoted by progressivism. To speak up about abortion or homosexuality, for example, will get you ostracized at least, and very possibly fired. So what do people have to do in exchange for a paycheck? Sell out.

On the other hand, in order to work for organizations on the more “conservative” side of the divide, you have to remain silent about racism and economic oppression, not to mention the support for sexual depravity that is increasingly apparent on that side as well. To speak up about any of these issues will get you kicked out of the tribe. So what do people do in exchange for a paycheck? Sell out.

This extends to pastors as well, unfortunately. Many are unwillingly to speak about issues on either side of the cultural divide because it will cause people to leave their church. And when people leave churches, pastors get fired. So what do they do in exchange for a paycheck? Sell out.

There is another word the Bible uses for putting worldly possessions, peace, and comfort ahead of God and his truth: idolatry. When King Nebuchadnezzar created a giant gold idol and decreed that everyone in Babylon must bow down and worship it whenever the music played, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could have been sell outs and obeyed the law. (Daniel 3) Instead, they stood firm and were thrown into the fiery furnace.  We need a few more people willing to do that today.

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