Factors Of Materialism

Such possessions are utilized in a competitive manner in order to display status and values “Whom we invite to dinner affects who marries whom, which then affects who inherits what, which affects whose children get a head start” (76). This reinforces the existence of social class and capitalism in the sense that bodies are used as machines to work and eventually gain money to spend it on objects that seems to impress people on the surface, but in reality it only validates the person’s status and social class. Using my family home as an example, each room is designed to host different kinds of guests for certain occasions. No guest will ever be situated in the family’s living room for the reason that the wood design on the walls, the green velvet couches, the simple picture frames and the fact that it is directly open to the kitchen does not scream fancy, but comfort instead. For that, the guests are always welcomed in the fancy guest room, which has the fancy purple couches that are perfectly suited with the expensive silver accessories, the silver vases that contains the weekly rearranged black flowers and the displaced silver see-through cabinets that contains the finest chinas, crystals and silverware. In addition, some people in the Middle East still hold on to their culture, and as a result, some guests prefer to

If Tyler Durden from Fight Club was sitting inside $340,000 Lamborghini Aventador, his hatred towards materialism probably would have driven him to accelerate the car right into the ocean. If James Twitchell was sitting inside of it, he probably would have just left the car in a parking structure with the keys still inside. Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club and James Twitchell’s essay “The Allure of Luxury”both take negative against the concept and phenomenon of Western materialism, where society indulge on luxurious items to the extent of being the focus of life. In Fight Club, the idea of anti-materialism is taken to a great extent, with the book’s main character and Tyler focusing on destroying the materialistic society with violence to restore a more primitive way of living. However, in Twitchell’s piece, materialism is taken more moderately, describing how materialism has rapidly expanded throughout the Western nations, questioning the if it is beneficial or malicious. I believe that materialism does provide great benefits that allowed us human beings to advance as a society. However materialism introduces numerous complications that impact our society on a macroscale. Before comparing and contrasting my view of materialism, we will first explore Twitchell’s essay, then Fight Club to first better understand their stance and concept of materialism.

“It’s not what you own its what people think you own” (Ewen 183). Consumerism is fueling today’s “middle class”. Stewart Ewen’s “Chosen People” goes into detail about the rise of the materialistic middle class.

(MIP-1) Many people in the society are materialistic and too wrapped up in all of their stuff. (SIP-A) They use materials and want more and more in order to have the items replace something less physical and more valuable. (STEWE-1)

Everyone enjoys material things, whether they want a brand new car or even a phone; these items do not provide any necessity for survival, yet they make people’s lives much easier, and even more

Materialistic items play a key role in the world today. People use these items, such as technological appliances, to fulfill their daily wants and needs. However, most people do not realize the negative effects of such a heavy reliance on material goods. In “The Allegory of the Cave,” Plato shares his idea that an overdependence on items can negatively affect ethical decisions. This idea is discussed in “The Veldt,” by Ray Bradbury, The Truman Show, by Peter Weir, and Daniel Key’s novel, Flowers for Algernon. Throughout all three stories, characters greatly rely on items and other people, leading them to make unethical decisions. In some cases, people are objectified as a result of being needed, desired, and treated unfairly. In “The Veldt,” The Truman Show, and Flowers for Algernon, an overreliance on items leads to a loss of focus on morals and what is ethically important.

We can see this portrayed in Antigone, Romeo and Juliet, Our Town, and Spoon River Anthology. In the Quran it says “The man who makes wealth a need is just like the man with a stomach that never gets full.” This is materialism, a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values. In Antigone, materialism is show in Kreon.

There are many textbook arguments against materialism: the divisibility argument, the introspection argument, and the argument for measurement:

Have you ever gone to the store and just had to buy that article of clothing or those sweet Nikes? How about when you’re grocery shopping and those donuts look too good not to buy? How long has it been since you last picked up your phone or other electronic device? That is materialism. People can grow attached to objects and have a very hard time getting rid of things. This can become a serious issue when left unchecked and in some rare cases can lead to a person's death.

Zygmunt Bauman is the writer and author of consuming life and liquid modernity. He is among the pioneering founders of the post-modernism theory that is characteristic of most theories in sociology and philosophy. The concepts and positions posited by Baunam will be heavily relied upon in the composition of this essay – albeit subject to diverse opinions in analysis and with reliance of critique that is presented from various avenues such as contradictory theories to those of the author. In consuming life, Bauman asserts that consumerism has surpassed the mundane quality of consumption. This means that human advancement has led to the quintessential disorder where consumerism coerces humans into lukewarm and superficial meeting of needs and desires, as opposed to consumption which was individualistic in nature and self-gratifying. Individuality is the opposite of consumerism. Bauman attests that desires and life of worth can be attained only from egoistic search of satisfaction. However, individualistic system and egoism cannot push societies to prosperity and advancement. Insofar as consumerism contorts human culture and introduces dangers of ideology and religion, it is only through consumerism that advances in humanity and advancement that man can utilize ideologies such as capitalism, laissez faire conditions, international trade, diplomacy, and other diverse attributes in transforming human culture.

These type of people want to show their power, their social status, by having better objects than their peers. Apple's products phenomena is a good exemple that perpetuate this idea: the more recent Iphone they have, the higher they are in the social rank. However, people who construct their indentity by buying products creat a superficial appearence. Meanwhile, they do not work on their real personnality. According to this thought the actor Will Smith also point out that overmuch people spend money they do not own on things they don't even want, because they want to impress people they dislike. Hense, a materialist is makedly more concerned with material goods and have a fewer interest in developping is intellectual, cultural or even spiritual

For the longest time, it has been American culture to praise wealth; we have always been in love with the idea of money. It is due to these fundamental American values that many, whether rich or poor, desire to present themselves lavishly as a person of fortune. Thorstein Veblen, a renown Norwegian-American economist/sociologist, was well-known for his famous theory of “conspicuous consumption”. Veblen, being a vocal opponent of capitalism, shared his theory of conspicuous consumption which spoke of the consumeristic habits of people—which he frowned upon— and the tendencies of the rich to waste their money and the poor to waste their time. Veblen elaborated on the ways in which the rich waste their money in the purchase of extravagances

As advertising usually portrays the message that material possessions bring fulfillment, happiness, and success, an increase in the perceived reality of advertising can cause an increase in general materialism (Chaplin & John, 2007; Goldberg, Gorn, Peracchio, & Bamossy, 2003). In sum, this study contributes to the existing literature on youth’s advertising exposure and materialism in three ways: (1) it is based on longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data, (2) it focuses on children from an age group (8- to 11-year olds) that until now has received little attention in materialism research, and (3) it deals with both direct and mediated effects of children’s advertising exposure on materialism. Direct Effect of Advertising Exposure on Materialism Several correlational studies have shown that children’s advertising exposure and materialism are positively related (Atkin, 1975a; Atkin, 1975b; Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003b; Moschis & Churchill, 1978; Moschis & Moore, 1982; Schor, 2005; Ward & Wackman, 1971). Because of their use of cross-sectional data, though, most scholars can only theorize about the causal direction of the relation between children’s advertising exposure and materialism (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003a). On the one hand children’s advertising exposure is plausible to precede materialism, because it is advertising’s aim to evoke an increased need for products (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003a; 2003b). Up until now, two

According to Wilkins and Sanford (2009), there are several elements of a consumerism worldview; accumulating and using things brings fulfillment, money is power, we need just a little bit more, people are viewed as objects to consume, and if something ceases to fulfill me or meet my needs it should be discarded. With the idea that by accumulating and using things brings fulfillment, whether it be fulfillment of material things or fulfillment of emotional needs, this worldview neglects to fulfill our deepest emotional needs leaving us always desiring more to fill that void. Money is power leaves people always striving to accumulate wealth so they can have power and control over situations, because you are only important or significant if you have wealth. Also with the consumerism worldview, we always feel that we need a little bit more, because what you already have is never enough, due to material

Under the influence of the materialism, they even forget the role of emotions and feelings in human relationships. They have become selfish in their relations also. They value all the things with money. For their profit, they can easily cross the moral boundaries established by the traditional values, as Gurcharan Das himself accepts in the “Introduction”: