A Taste of Consumerism... (#38)

I've lately been indulged to the reality of consumerism and our materialistic society. I even watched a documentary film on affluenza (a made up disease from the word affluence). For those of you who dont know what affluence is, it merely means wealth.

Consumerism is denounced as "bad" and therefore perceived as "bad". Many people however, are unaware of their own lifestyles and how they are actually under the influence to consumerism more than we'd like to know, or are even aware of. So, in reaction to thinking consumerism is bad, many people will honestly say they hate consumerism. They will believe ,in their own minds, that they really do hate consumerism, but five minutes later they start to argue to their best friends what game system (almost all of us guys have done this my age) is better, or contemplate what to wear the next day (you girls definitly do this; dont deny it), or talk about your newest gadget, clothing, movie, etc. Even i'm one to be in synch with the consumeristic society.

We are naturally closely related to the things we have and the things we use. We like a particular gadget, clothing brand labels, movies, books, electronics, or materials based on our liking or distinction of that something; which can often reveal something about ourselves. In some ways we wont be able to eleiminate materialism, and some of it is ok for society, as it shows who we are, what we are, and why. Just dont forget the quote:

Men have become the tools of their tools.
Henry David Thoreau

Consumerism has its ups and downs, and its my goal, through this writing, reading of several articles, and watching that documentary of affluenza, is to answer some questions and ask some of my own.

Consumerism is seemingly inbred in our human nature, and we often identify with objects and use them to portrey who and what we are. Too much of un-needed and simultaneously un-wanted things, though, is what consumerism is. So what is consumerism?

Consumerism, defined by wikipedia, is....a term used to describe the effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions and consumption.

Consumerism is considered bad for many reasons. One reason I can think of, is the difference that many people throughout the world do not have such lifestyles offered to them (poor people) and therefore starve, die and miss out on many of the things we have the ability to easily do with what we are given (watch movies, play games, go to the movies, drive cars, fly planes go on boats, buy specially constructed housing).

My greatest concerns of consumerism is, one, I listed above, and, global destruction. I mean would you want to travel like this ?

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare1.com/Articles/Nworah/transport.jpg

or look and FEEL like this?

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/387/sudan2.jpg
http://www.comedyclub.co.za/feature/images/starve.jpg
http://www.nairobits.com/e-learning/courses/course2/php/studimagoos/sick.jpg

Hunger, and disease is mainly a lack of resources, they have NO MONEY! They have no materalism, and we have a super abundence of it over here, and we waste most of it on stuff we dont need nor want. We can reduce it, we can even recycle many of those resources. I'm not asking to simplify your life and be a Puritan (its just not practical nor exciting to live that way), just merely asking you to re-think and evaluate what you have and need and if you plan on buying something else, is it THAT worthy of a buy? I also ask you to re-use what you can, recycle what can be recycled, and conserve as much else as you can till you cannot.

My other greatest concern is that of global destruction. We use many resources faster than the world can replenish them, and if we add MORE people to the world, all we will get is MORE suffering and less ways to deal with them, with an overconsumption of goods that we wont be able to replace as quickly.

Some questions that I ask you to ponder, which I immeditaly came to question after hearing the inital remarks of what consumerism is and what everyone thinks of it.

Is simplicty important to produce happiness?
What produces happiness?
Is happiness the one thing in life everyone strives for? Is that all important to all of us?
Why?

And finially..Why is consumerism bad?