The Story Of Stuff: Consumerism At Its Worst

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The Story of Stuff: Consumerism at its Worst

America has become a culture that is ‘for consumers, by the corporations’. While this is an immense statement, there is enough evidence to back such a claim. For one, it can be reflected in the fact that every aspect of our life involves commodities in some way: from the bed we sleep on, to the food we eat on our tables, to what we do for entertainment.. Commodities are ever-increasing in significance for the average American. In fact, our whole concept of “modernity” is deeply hinged on materialism: we cannot imagine being ‘modern’ without the widely available commodities and establishments around us today, like toilet paper, convenience stores, and iPhones. In such culture, the ability to consume …show more content…

There, Annie Leonard (2012) discusses several aspects of what she calls the “materials economy”, or the system, by which we go through materials in the form of commoditized goods gleaned from natural resources from extraction to disposal. Besides we go through this system with incredible pace, consequently that our own natural resources do not suffice to keep production up. Nonetheless as a consumer culture, our identities and economies are so deeply hinged on consumption, that we could not bear to halt production. Consequently what we do is externalize costs so that people on our side of the system only feel the economic burden of consuming. Since our present model of economic development requires the immense squandering of raw material and traditional energy sources, we place undue stress on the environment of other countries for the sake of maintaining our model of …show more content…

Through promoting consumerism, corporations and the government have effectively reduced our status and primary worth, from individuals in the truest sense of the word to being mere consumers. We see this in the way our government and corporation assesses and indexes each of us based on our socioeconomic status, i.e. our buying power. Our identity as a First World country and as economic superpower is predicated by our ability to produce and consume. It is very well reflected in our cultural measures of success, for a large part, involve material success and wealth. As such, our value is depreciated to the point that our chief responsibility in this life is to consume, and all our worth lies in our ability to keep

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