Materialism: The Bad Effects Of Being Materialistic

Parents serve as role models for their children and guide them through their early years of development. Children model everything a parent does and incorporate what they see into their own lives. Parents are responsible for teaching their children the behaviors and skills necessary to interact in their everyday lives. Parents have a huge influence on their child’s social skills. Negative examples can be detrimental to a child’s development.

In the relationship between children and parents, there are vices but also virtues. Children have to deal with the consequences of their parents wrongdoings in society; however, they are also

The author of the book The Dumbest Generation is concerned over young Americans and what the digital age is doing to them. Throughout the book he cites many percentages of young Americans who are dropping out of high school and college and he blames the digital era for it. The author loves the idea of traditional values and routine and he believes that due to the amount of technology that is rising, it is killing off those core values that students need in order to grow and stay productive. He also claims that younger adults abuse their time, and their priorities compared to the older generation have changed significantly. The reasons that he gives because of these changes are due to the digital media and the advances of technology that have gone up quickly within a few years. This results in adolescent teenagers who are abusing their time over the web. Instead of trying to study and learn they are on Facebook and other social networks.

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.

materialistic lifestyle needed them to in order to live the way they were used to. “Where we are

Materialism is a poison to society that prevents people from doing what is necessary for them. The novel, “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer demonstrates this. The novel is centered on Chris McCandless. He was on his way to graduate from a well-known university. He decides to leave, donating his money and burning the rest. He went into the wilderness, living off the land. He demonstrates materialism by taking only what was on his back. Materialism is a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values. The average person requires possession of physical objects in order to be content. Chris shows through his actions that having physical comfort is not needed to acquire satisfaction. In “Into

When humans become more materialistic, they lose the ability to maintain normal human relationships emotions connected to human relationships such as love or friendship. In modern day 2017, everybody is becoming more materialistic, wanting the newest

Today, people focus only on how much. Success is not seen as happiness; it is shown solely by how much money one makes. This belief is the inverse of what Emerson and Thoreau believed in. Their predictions about what society would be like, in a materialistic world, are spot on. See that people today are programmed to practice materialism, it creates a very competitive society. There is a smaller emphasises on moral values and a strong emphasis on materialistic values. With this comes negative effects

People should always have the best of the best regardless of our financial status, correct? With this in mind. Consequently, North Americans are too materialistic. Many people in North America feel the need to have a nice, expensive car to commute every day. When in fact, many people put themselves in difficult financial situations in order to make payments for a luxury vehicle, when they could have purchased a car that is more affordable for their budget. Besides having a nice car, North Americans will discard of perfectly functioning items to have a reason to purchase the newest model. Specifically, in this day and age, cellphones are the most important thing to have. Every year a new model of a cellphone

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.

The purpose of this article is to persuade teenagers to not have a sense of entitlement or show selfishness, and it also persuades parents to persuade

While many people find happiness without many resources, many Americans see objects as a life necessity. According to Anna Quindlen in her OP-ED “Stuff is not Salvation”, Society has started to gear more and more into spending money on something the saw on the TV add rather, than saving for times of trouble. Americans have become so materialistic that a few hours after celebrating Thanksgiving, a holiday about giving thanks for what you have, they go and trample each other at malls over items on sale. Due to this desire of society to own every new gadget, many Americans are creating unnecessary debt for themselves, all of this for useless resources which we don’t even appreciate.

In fact, a recent study on materialism said, “children who watch a lot of commercials attach more value to money and things,” and, “...believe that happiness can be bought”(Opree). Children are more susceptible to being influenced by the advertisements they see. Therefore, advertisements aimed at adolescents often feature expensive toys and brands that appeal to children and cause them to want to purchase the items. The children also examine how delighted the people in the advertisements look with the products, and that makes them believe that they must buy their happiness. Another study shows that people will, “...establish buying habits they will carry into adulthood”(Day, Nancy). Basically, when children identify advertisements for popular items, they will begin to purchase the items and become loyal to those brands. These could be expensive brands that will influence their other purchases, making them think that if one item they purchase is expensive, then their other purchases must be expensive as well. Wanting their lives to be on the level of the expensive brands they own, consumers are becoming more and more materialistic.

This was mentioned quite a bit in the article “Living Deeply” by Janet Luhrs. She tells us not to live on autopilot, not to buy things that don’t have meaning and to live deliberately. Her example of the fact that we shouldn’t be so materialistic that stuck with me the most was, “we seem to be awfully busy here in the US. But at the end of our lives have we really achieved more than the simple farmer, and will we remember that we bought 12 pairs of pants instead of 12?” That points out the flaws of the consumerist world that we live in. Is it really better to slave away for minimum wage, just so every Friday we can buy another item that we probably won’t think about three weeks down the road? This makes me want to slow down my life and stop trying to race the clock. I want to have my own garden and my own self sustainable life so I can essentially try to have as little of a footprint on the Earth as

Parents put maturity demands on youth. Parent use their authority to keep children safe and guide children’s choice. At the same time, also listen to children’s point of view to encourage their input on activity choices within specific bounds.