Consumerism Will Be the Death of Us
“Before long it will be the animals who do the dieting so that the ultimate consumer does not have to.”
Mimi Sheraton
People (Americans) love to shop. People love to have the newest and best thing on the market. People love new technologies so much that they spend money they don't have and it is far worse during the holidays. New ways of advertising, paired with cultural shifts toward consumerism, seem to be driving the trend of these consumerist attitudes.
It seems that when there are too many other new demands on your time or when you're under stress to meet deadlines at work, or if you are dealing with a difficult relationship that you're going to be at risk for spending more. This lead me to the question, does attitude precede behavior? Or, does behavior precede attitude. In other words is it the attitudes in American society that cause over-consumption, or is it because everyone has is out to purchase the newest product that causes consumer attitudes?
Some other commonly asked questions about consumerism and consumption in America are:
How are the products and resources we consume actually produced?
What are the impacts of that process of production on the environment, society, on individuals?
What are the impacts of certain forms of consumption on the environment, on society, on individuals?
Which actors influence our choices of consumption?
Which actors influence how and why things are produced or not?
What is a necessity and what is a luxury?
The following link provides details on consumerism vs. environmentalism: http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/publications/frontier_series/Consum-Pt8.pdf
Unfortunately these attitudes have taken their tole on the environment of the entire globe, and its decline is yet to change course. To make things worse, American society has an enormous influence on the rest of the earth, and our consumerism lifestyle has, and is further, spreading throughout nations across the globe.
National Geographic has something to say about consumerism vs. environmentalism:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/01/0111_040112_consumerism.html
The only ways to help save the earth from societies mass consumer behavior is to STOP BUYING SO MUCH! As well as convince others to do the same, and of course, RECYCLE because the only world you got will not last if we continue on this lifestyle.
As the great Martin Luther King said April of 1967,
"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A nation can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy."
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