http://marketplace.publicradio.org/s...200703226.html
I think this guy is on to something. Consumerism has practically redefined what it is to be human. It's made us self-centered, impatient, and unsympathetic to real problems. I'm reminded of it everyday when I hear my young coworker blabber on about the drama of her MySpace "friends" or the tragedy of her old cell phone... Not as bad as when I worked at Radio Shack where salesmen are expected to try and convince people further that they NEED the latest cell phone (yes, NEED)... and strangely it works. Not a shocker. Most of the salesmen and women believe it too! (that's why I needed to quit that job )
It also, I believe, explains the way we look at politics these days... kind of as a mix of spectator sport and soap opera.
We are turning into creatures that do not create but want things created for them (which we will then take credit for the existence of)... and our cell phone model is far more important than their running water or infrastructure...
Blame the loss of values in this nation on multiculturalism, on secularism, on capitalism itself all you want. Name your boogeyman. For me, this is definitely the primary embodiment, if not the root cause, of the amorality and apathy of our generations and the one we're seeing into existence now.

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

I don't think there's anything wrong with consumption per se -- that's simply a manifestation of increasing material wealth, and isn't that a good thing?

It only becomes a problem when consumption becomes an end or a good in itself -- when people start thinking "my life would be perfect if I just had a plasma TV."

I also wonder how much of this is generational. Young adults are the most consumption-oriented age bracket. Partly that's because they're just starting it and don't have much; partly that's because they're young, and easily dazzled by shiny stuff or the need to have the latest cool thing, or using material goods to measure themselves against their peers. Partly it's because of the sheer novelty of being out from under your parents' wings and having your own money to spend any way you want.

But as you get older -- and, paradoxically, as your buying power generally increases -- consumption tends to become less important. Not only do you actually now have the values you were still developing in your 20s, but you get distracted by other demands -- career, marriage, kids. Further, I think that as the difficulty of acquiring stuff decreases, the less attraction it has. By the time we hit our mid-30s a lot of us start getting more concerned about getting rid of stuff, because our houses are crammed with crap we don't need or want.

Then, of course, these older folks look over and see teens and 20-somethings wasting money on buying stuff and more stuff and more stuff. And think "What a wasteful, vain, valueless generation."

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Man up.

Acquisition, so it is belived, is a good thing and promotes happiness. Therefor it follows that the acquisision of more should promote greater happiness. Good ol Adam Smith wrte "a man must be perfectly crazy who does no employ all the stock that he commands, and consume all that he can"

The ethos of the west has seem to become that possesnions will give security and peace. An ever increasing standard of living seem to be the great goal of many western nations. But my limited logic tels me this can not continue. We can not just consume more and more, as we can not just produce more and more. One day, it will just all, I don't know...end.

Maybe this is it. Consumarism is the relgion of choice now. Brandnames the gods, malls the temples and cathedrals, and I'm the guy with the crazy hair and poster - "The end is neigh! Buy at the great sale now, for the anger of the gods are upon us. The great factory will stop producing, and we will all lament and die! Do not be left behind! Buy now, or perish"

But seriously. When I worked with teenangers in Europe, and talking to family and friends in the UK, I am always amzed. I remember in France a teenanger complaining to me that the money he recieved as a living grant that month, did not enable him to buy the newest brand sneakers (trainers in some countries, tekkies over here). He could do lots of stuff with this money, just not that. I wanted to throttle him. I come from a society where, if you are lucky enough to get a grant, from the state, it is barely enough to buy food!

Yet, we are also cought up in it. It is everywhere. So, who is the pope of this religion then? Same masses, new opium!

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“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

If I'm to take a wild guess on why this phenomenon is on the rise, I'd say it's a symptom of human nature... We just aren't quick enough at adapting our cultural systems around new things. We need time. But as time goes on, the speed goes up. And like the commentator says, most of the speediest stuff is marginal improvements and stuff that creates rather than fills needs.
The younger generation has seen so much constant change that it dwarfs what even we (the people ten years or so older) have seen insofar as change. They are targeted by advertisements early on (I like the allusion to propaganda the commentator makes- it's a bit off, but functionally true) and raised taking things like cell phones for granted.
So while we carry a cell phone like it's a curse... most of the kids I see are constantly- I mean CONSTANTLY- replacing them as though an MP3 player attachment is necessary.
All these diversions in "new" technology clutter up our minds so that we lose sight of things that are actually important... and it's primarily because profit has become its own end, especially short-term profit pushed by regular financial statements... The world is faster paced than it was... and we're in such a hurry, we forget about life.
What's strange is that if we're better off now than ever before... why are we in such a hurry? Such a hurry that we lose sight of the original goals of the Protestant work ethic that capitalism was once connected to.

A lot of leftists are quick to blame capitalism itself. But capitalism is not to blame. It's how we look at it... and everything else in our lives.

__________________
"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

The author makes a valid observation about modern capitalism failing to meet needs. That is not so much a matter of abandonment of the poor, however, as it is overall "cultural debt" caused by the delusions of the relatively wealthy. I suggest that many people have few true needs in the primal sense, but we are genetically programmed to seek tools for survival, so even when we live comfortably, we tend to think as if the tools we seek were necessary.

The reason for this problem in economic development is the same as the reason for warfare, crime, promiscuity and many mental illnesses such as anxiety. We are genetically the same as we were 10,000 years ago, but 10,000 years ago we had to struggle to survive and reproduce. Aggression, fear and general brutishness were inevitable survival tools. Now, however, we are faced with few short-term threats to our survival, but we still possess the same instincts. Accordingly, the same feeling of "need" that a prehistoric man experienced when looking at a stone club is felt by a modern consumer looking at a cellular phone.

By doing this, we actually cause ourselves unnecessary stress. In such short-term "I must do this now to survive" thinking, we overlook what will make us happiest in the long term and we hurt the economy by neglecting resources (and persons) of greater productive potential where our long-term needs are concerned. Having stated that, since the government is itself no more than a monopolistic business that sells issues and candidates as products, it can do nothing to solve the problem. We have to use our free will to solve it ourselves.

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

That sure clears things up for me .

I have heard liberal arguments but this ant-capitalist rant certainly is worse than anything I have heard from anyone else on this forum.

There is nothing wrong with consumerism, people have to work for something, they have to have a motive to work. The whole idea of people working of the good of everyone is disastrous and never works. And if you have a problem with the way the United States economy/industries work you can go live in North Korea where most people are poor, work for nothing, and are bossed around and killed by an insane dictator.

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“Good leaders abhor wrongdoing of all kinds; sound leadership has a moral foundation.”

-Proverbs 16:12

Anti-consumerism is not anti-capitalism. The original capitalists in this country were not consumerists and the explosion of insane levels of consumerism is relatively new... in fact it seems to exponentially correlate with all the immorality you guys blame on secularism... and obsessive consumerism is a much more plausible cause for rampant loss of values.

Capitalism is also about building and producing. It's about solving problems. It's about saving money for important things and creating wealth.
Consumerism is removing these virtues from capitalism... And without them, capitalism is no better than communism... It becomes a ticking timebomb of selfish people in their own worlds who do not create or produce anything new and do not solve any problems.
When all you do with your wealth is consume, you give up your ability to invest. If you give up your power to invest, your wealth is really nothing.
Deficit spending is a bad policy for all of us. I know from personal experience.

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

The point of this thread didn't even feel the breeze when you missed it!

Nothing here is anti-capatalist (calling Force anti-capatalist is even a bit hilarious!)

Nobody is disagreeing that people has to have something to work for, but then you say the good of some one else is not something to work for. Sorry, but if that is what I WANT to work for, and if that is what makes me happy, then why not? Nobody here talked about a type of communism where every one is forced to do this.

And the point, as I understood it, is not that capatalism is bad, but how sad this world of consumarism has become, where people no longer look for happiness in human relationships, in families, in intelectual or physical persuits, but in material possesion. When happiness is measured in how much, what brand etc. I own, then I still feel we live in a sad sad world. These things never make you happy, and anyway, in two months, there is a smiling blond or sport star, telling you that phone, watch whatever can no longer make you happy, but the new Model X4592B Super-phone can!

Itis the emptiness of it all that makes me sad

__________________
“The subject no longer has to be mentioned by name. Someone is sick. Someone else is feeling better now. A friend has just gone back into the hospital. Another has died. The unspoken name, of course, is AIDS.”
“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

128, how old are you? Nothing "anti-capitalist" has been written in this thread. Consumerism is a culture of short-term thinking in which individuals become obsessed with unnecessary consumption at the expense of long-term happiness- including their own. A critique of a cultural phenomenon is not advocacy of government intervention.

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)