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modern consumer culture
american consumerism culture
consumerism modern society
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If you want to know if all of our holidays have been turned into consumer driven shopping orgies, the answer lies in the major department stores. Take a walk through Macy's or Lord or Taylor or any major store in Oct. and notice the Christmas decorations. That's right, Christmas decorations. `Tis the season to break the bank. Our capitalistic society is always looking for a reason for driving consumerism and what better reason than a holiday! If there's a month without one, we'll make one up...just so we have some reason to put some useless piece of crap on sale. What ever happened to all the traditional values that are at the core of all or most of these holidays? Do we as a society even remember?
Since it's the holiday season, let's start with Christmas. This is the number one offender of being a Hallmark Holiday. This is the holiday that is the basis for all of the Christian faith. Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Christ. Someone even came up with a very clever phrase to remember that fact; "Jesus is the reason for the season." It seems tha...
1. The main idea is not only that owning stuff is not the key to happiness, it’s also that consumers today own more than they need to thrive which directly impacts the environment. Hill illustrates the environmental impact by showing statistics of global warming today versus the past century, and how consumerism is leading to a hotter climate. Hill debunks claims of buying happiness by discussing a study where stress hormones spike to their highest when people are managing their personal belongings. Hill’s most prominent example that consumerism is not the answer is himself, as he discusses some of the most stressful times of his life being right after coming into a large sum of money and buying whatever he fancied. When Hill concludes his article, he states that “I have less—and enjoy more. My space is small. My life is big” (213).
Of all religious holidays that have been adopted by secularists, one of the most popular would be Christmas, originally meant to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ. With the exact date of Jesus' birth unknown during ancient times, Christmas was initially assigned to January 6th, but was changed to December 25th under the influence of the winter solstice (Nothaft 903). Peculiarly however, is the universal celebration of Christmas al...
The realm of higher education is in a state of constant evolution, which can be witnessed on as small of a time scale as a year-to-year basis; however, the more drastic changes are most notable in larger scales, such as five years, ten years, and so on. One of the main forces for change is the student body and their parents, to some extent. Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, wrote his essay On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students about the more recent changes of not only universities, but of the student body as well. He laments how consumerism has transformed these institutes of learning into, basically, glorified daycares, and he does make a rather compelling argument by drawing upon his personal experiences as a teacher.
Thanksgiving Day is a day of family, food, and giving thanks for the blessings in life and yet some people believe Thanksgiving to be a prep day for Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. The focus of Thanksgiving shifted from family bonding to incessant shopping. This trend of taking away from the hours of Thanksgiving in order to shop is enraging. It steals away from family time for the shoppers and the employees. Employers threaten workers that if they do not work on that certain holiday, they will be fired. Black Friday should be kept to Friday instead of moving in on my family time. The whole culture of Black Friday has become repugnant and unnecessary.
Christmas has consumed itself. At its conception, it was a fine idea, and I imagine that at one point its execution worked very much as it was intended to. These days, however, its meaning has been perverted; its true purpose ignored and replaced with a purpose imagined by those who merely go through the motions, without actually knowing why they do so.
In Professor Mark Edmundson’s essay, where the main thesis was consumerism in the American modern college educational system, he presents himself as an english professor at the University of Virginia who he cares about his students and how they learn. He explained that, while he received good feedback from his students through their evaluations about his teaching method, he feels that he is being too easy on his students and he isn’t teaching them the way he would like. He also explains how he usually has to use a joke or an “off-the-wall question” to get the physical class moving. In this way, he is merely entertaining his class, rather than teaching them. He later compared himself to a professor that asked the two questions of his students: “What book did you most dislike in this course?
According to the current data, depending on the source being used, the United States is often regarded as a capitalist economy, but it is actually a “mixed economy” that is fueled by consumerism. In the day to day shuffle, society feels the consumerism and its manipulating control of consumers. Consumerism is a form of government control which leads society to form an almost uncontrollable buying habit, especially during the holiday season. Holidays, once spent with family to praise and give thanks, are now being taken over by the strong desire to run to an awesome sale to buy unnecessary stuff. Society is allowing the government to split families up during a holiday with the lure of unbelievable sales. Author Matt Walsh wrote an insightful online Huffington Post article titled, “If You Shop on Thanksgiving, You Are Part of the Problem.” In his article he also shows strong concern for society’s outrageous spending habits during the holiday season, and how the government fuels the shopping frenzy. Matt Walsh additionally goes so far as to state, “Why give thanks for what you have when there’s so much you don’t have? That’s the new meaning of Thanksgiving: count your blessings, and then buy some more blessings and count them again” (Walsh. Web). Society has strength in numbers to help stop the government from its money driven ways that play a role in families growing further apart. Society must be rehabilitated and forego this buying habit, return to traditional family values, and not allow the government to rape family unity through clever economic brainwashing.
As an employee at a popular retail store, I feel that the holiday shopping outside the home should be stopped. I have noticed that everyone’s attitude changes for the worse and not the better during this season. For example, this past month I saw a neighbor of mine fighting with another woman over a $10 ‘NERF’ football. This football happened to be the last one left. On any other Saturday, one of the two women would give up the football and try to find something else. But during this season all they want to do is rip each others head off for the ball.
Capitalism is the term which is used for explaining the dominant economic system in Western World since the feudal system, so we can see this changing below, from the start of feudal system (11th century) to the modern day.
Christmas is a special time of year that deserves to be remembered for its true meaning. Every year, Christmas becomes more and more commercialized and society forgets the origin of Christmas. It was not started with cookies, toys, and a fat man that delivers them, but instead it started with a humble inn where our Savior was born. The definition of Christmas is “a holiday on December 25 celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.” Nowhere in that definition does it say anything about the outrageous pressure society has set on consumers to buy, buy, buy during the Christmas season. Christmas is about presence not presents.
Today it seems as though Christmas has fallen victim to materialism and commercialization. Rather than it being a time of loving and giving, it has become a stressful season of greed. Amidst all the hustle and bustle, it is important for us to recognize the true reason of the season, and celebrate in a fashion that exemplifies that reason.
Holidays have always been known to affect our consumer culture for many years, but how it all began eludes many people and very few studies have been completed on it. Even though some say that the subject is too broad to precisely identify how holidays, especially Christmas, directly affect our market, I have found that people’s values, expectations and rituals related to holidays can cause an excessive amount of spending among our society. Most people are unaware that over the centuries holidays have become such a profitable time of year for industries that they now starting to promote gift ideas on an average of a month and a half ahead of actual holiday dates to meet consumer demands.
Holidays are a celebration and an enjoyment of festivities. Although they are a commonality across the world, holidays differ between countries and cultures. But, what many do not realize is that holidays are ultimately ideology driven, that is that the group that celebrates these holidays follows a certain set of ideas and beliefs. Whether the ideology is religion based, or politically based, all holidays are centered around ideologies.
Christmas is the most popular holiday in all of the land. Mostly everyone loves Christmas. There are three categories of Christmas people. Number one; the haters. They despise Christmas and think it is the devil and nothing good comes from lying to children and giving gifts for absolutely no reason at all. Number two; the average person. The ones who just buy the gifts, wear the holiday sweaters, and go to the annual Christmas gathering at Grandma’s where gifts and laughs are exchanged. Number three; the die hard Santa’s of the group. The few mothers or fathers who decorate the day after Halloween to get into the Christmas spirit. The tree is up on November first and the Christmas lights are hung all year round. They make sure to go black friday shopping to get everyone a gift, even cousin Nicholas, who is three times removed. Christmas is
“People recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobiles, hi-fi sets, split level homes………social control is anchored in the new needs which the consumer society has produced." (Marcuse,1968:24)To what extent are we controlled by the consumer society we live in?