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Materialism effects on society
How does society shape personal values
How does society shape personal values
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The Home
The townhouse, a clean, concise, convenient, cookie-cut, carbon copy of society’s solution to the home. In today’s society of “Big Apples”, “Windy Cities” and “Cities of Angels”, the home has been lost under stacks of green paper. The heart of the home is being choked by the fast-paced materialism that pushes the individual into a heart attack of conformity. Society has become a speed addict for production, wanting bigger, more, and faster in the pursuit for the better. This “better” is often short-lived and quickly replaced. This cycle of replacement needs to end with a solving reinvention that will allow human life to breathe and be comfortable within its own skin. Lives are to be lived not viewed. To do this people need to break the mold that society is mass-producing and live life for themselves and up to their own standards of success and not follow the blue-print of the government’s bureaucratic and aristocratically favored system and ideals. The home should be a saran wrap covering of comfort, security, peace and enjoyment to be shared by and with loved ones. To often in today’s world the lines between business and personal have almost been blurred into oblivion. These are one of the issues that need to be stopped or altered so as to return the house to a home.
The home is the outermost layer of a person’s skin. It breathes, absorbs, settles and changes just as the people that dwell inside of it do. Inside this slowly commercialized dwelling often resides incomplete individuals who attempt to fill this incompleteness; usually with materialistic vices. The biggest of these perpetrators are “name-brand” overpriced fashion labels whose only use is to deplete the individual’s wealth and morals. People ...
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...p well before the age that they should. Children must be raised not watched. Guardians need to take a more active role in their child’s life; for lack of it could be detrimental to the child in the future, i.e. the lack of one.
The h.o.m.e, a Humans Originally Made Environment, should be full of comfort, peace, and security. These are the first brick to be laid in any home and should begin every life. For houses to return to the state of homes a shower of truth must wash away all of the superficial and self-blocking things that tend to make people forget the simple things and sometimes the most important things in life. It is time to stand up and break the mold that has crushed and conformed the human spirit into a lifeless robot of things without substance. The latter can never be a substitute for the essentials that are needed for a happy, healthy life.
... get help when they’re in trouble. The child will also feel more independent in a sense knowing that their parent isn't on their back watching their every move.
In the essay The Chosen People, Stewart Ewen, discusses his perspective of middle class America. Specifically, he explores the idea that the middle class is suffering from an identity crisis. According to Ewen’s theory, “the notion of personal distinction [in America] is leading to an identity crisis” of the non-upper class. (185) The source of this identity crisis is mass consumerism. As a result of the Industrial Revolution and mass production, products became cheaper and therefore more available to the non-elite classes. “Mass production was investing individuals with tools of identity, marks of personhood.” (Ewen 187) Through advertising, junk mail and style industries, the middle class is always striving for “a stylistic affinity to wealth,” finding “delight in the unreal,” and obsessed with “cheap luxury items.” (Ewen 185-6) In other words, instead of defining themselves based on who they are on the inside, the people of middle class America define themselves in terms of external image and material possessions.
The story “Everyday Uses” begins with a Mother talking about her daughters, Maggie and Dee. Dee is outgoing, beautiful, and judgmental; she searches for things that may give her life purpose. Family values are of very little importance to Dee. She finds her significance more in her appearance, than in endearment to the people of with whom she has shared her life, due to her insecurities. Then, there is her little sister Maggie, a small, shy girl, who has large insecurities due to her appearance. She also walks with a limp, due to a fire that occurred at her old house when she was younger. Maggie may lack external beauty but, she has internal beauty; a caring heart and she loves her Mother. The love that Maggie has for her mom is in sharp contrast with
I interviewed Rita Wright from Northwest Georgia Housing Authority. She is in charge of resident services. She is an African American with a predominately African American clientele; therefore I knew I would be able to obtain much information from her viewpoint. When I asked Ms. Wright to talk about her key values and characteristics common in her culture she talked extensively about family. Family is a major part of her life. She stated that she is like most African Americans in which family values are extremely important. There are several people in her life who have earned the title of aunt, sister or cousin who are not blood related. These are individuals who have always been there for her and her family, so they too are considered just like family. Most African American families are embedded in complex kinship networks of blood and nonrelated individuals (Diller, 2011). To Ms. Wright there is nothing more precious than family. If family wrongs you, you forgive and forget. If family needs help, you must be there for them. In the end family is all we have.
Having a house and having a home used to coincide. Families used to live in the same house for generations, but now the sentimental value of having a house has changed. As Quindlen puts it, “There was a time when where you lived often was where you worked and where you grew the food you ate and even where you were buried. When that era passed, where you lived at least was where your parents had lived and where you would live with your children when you became enfeebled” (Quindlen 215). However, over time even that changed. Now we have grown to live in a house and then move on like it was nothing. Sentimental value for a house has dwindled. Quindlen demonstrates that “suddenly, where you lived was where you lived for three years, until you could move on to something else and something else again” (Quindlen 215). However, for those without a house, they would give anything to have that sentimental feeling that used to come with having a house. But that’s just the problem; for most a house and a home no longer coincide. We can own a house but not have a home, or vice versa. After all, “Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like it” (Quindlen 214). People can have a home without having a house. A home simply means having a family,
Before I begin contrasting my home culture to the host culture at Friends of Refugees, I must explain some social norms of my culture. As I previously stated, I come from a mostly typical American family and display at least five of the norms presented in Craig Storti’s book, Figuring Foreigners Out, A Practical Guide. One norm discussed is Individualism, where identity is found in oneself (Storti, 1999). I experience individualism through the choices I am presented in daily life and through the expectations of others, particularly my family and school. For example, my parents did expect me to go to college, but they imposed little influence on the major I selected, that decision was mine alone. Apart from college, my parents, like most other
Buying and owning your home is part of the American dream. Although the dream itself has since changed, the home still remains the main focal point. Today owning a home doesn’t necessarily mean a house. People now buy duplexes, cooperative apartments, and condominiums. For some families it could take up to a couple of generations before it’s able to have the capabilities of buying a home. To many people it means a certain achievement that only comes after years of hard work. It is a life altering decision and one of the most important someone can make in their lifetime. The reasons behind the actual purchase could vary. Before anything is done, people must understand that it’s an extraneous process and it is a long term project.
A simpler, easy-going way of life is being adopted by people young and old, single and married, employed and not so, across the nation. Tiny houses are residential buildings typically less than 600 square feet – larger than a shed, but not quite big enough to be called a cottage. They have nearly all the facilities and rooms a regular home has, but in a more compact area, without all the “excess” space. This trend of down-sizing, also known as the Tiny House Movement, isn’t a new one. Rather, it’s the revival of a past idea. In the 1950’s the average American single-family home was 980 square feet. As of 2009, that average has increased by 275% to an enormous 2,700 square feet. Garages take up about 15% of that size while appliances fill another 10%. American refrigerators are double the size of those in Europe, and use enough energy to power six televisions for 10-12 hours per day (Strobel). The purpose of tiny houses is to reduce the amount of space in one’s home in order to reduce the amount of clutter in one’s life – to realize what is a w...
Habitable housing and the ‘Quality of life’ that it provides, brings the concept of “QUALITY” in the fore. This quest for quality of life includes in its ambit many areas of family’s life along with interpersonal relationship, interaction within community, and relationship to the environment and to immediate surroundings. It is generally observed that government intervention and market based responses to meet the housing need in urban areas of developing countries has been under tremendous pressure. This failure has forced the government to direct its available resources towards bridging the mismatch between demand and supply of housing. Thus, there has been relatively little research pertaining to the extent to which new housing meets people’s need, aspiration and preference.
The work that I do is a product of my own history; it often revolves around the question of belongingness and home. Throughout my life I have lived in 16 homes, 10 cities/villages, 4 countries and 3 continents. The constant change, the constant need to adapt to new surroundings, new cultures made me question the notion of home and how that affects our identities.
In the “Champagne Taste, Beer Budget” the character Dee was a fashion addict and would empty her wallet and max out her credit card during a single trip to the mall. “At first I just took pride in being the best-dressed female at my high school” [279] Dee was soon to find out that she was running out of money so fast that she would have to start bowing money from her mom. Then Dee’s mom was one day snooping around Dee’s room and was seeing where Dee’s paychecks were going too to find out that they were going careless shopping. Then Dee’s mother transferred her to another school to see if that helped with her addiction with labels, this worked Dee had “less emphasis on clothes, and more emphasis on work.” In this essay, we saw that Dee “wore a designer emblem on her chest like a badge of honor and respect” she was only in tenth grade when this was happing. Future generations are going to struggle with this because everyone wants the best label like Nike, Under Armor and North Face but there are way more than just those three labels you also have other things like technology that everyone wants, like the latest and greatest
Although a home takes many years to begin to resemble a comfortable enviroment that we as humans set up to live within a sheltered structure; there are many problems that might be overt and some that we might not readily notice. In this essay I will examine some of the causes that make homes comfortable and bring us as a species closer to nature as well as the causes that might have a negative impact on our lives.
There are considerable benefits in building high-rise apartments. The high density living space promises economic and environmental benefits such as reduced land use and increased transport efficiency (Barter 2000) as well as social benefits such as improved access to facilities (Kaido 2005) as well as improving the sense of community by creating shared social spaces (Lim 2011). It also gives a sense of privacy while offering perception of visual contact with society, nature and space (Wassenberg 2013) and there are health benefits in living on upper floors, such as the reduced likelihood of dying of heart or lung disease (Hagan 2013). When built near the town center, apartments can provide its occupants with a high profile location with branding and image value as well as regenerate the spatial program of the locale (Lora 2002). High-rise apartments are continually built in a myriad of countries as a solution to the urgent need for housing and the lack of land.
... and they will not know that if you are constantly doing everything for them. They need to be aware that their parents should have their re-spect and that is not something you get when you fuss over your teen. Teenagers will often take your major efforts for granted and become challenged, if having to do something completely on their own. Parents should monitor and control their teenag-ers but to a certain degree; Of course it is good for a child to have dedicated and concerned parents, but the ‘helicopter parents’ take it to the next level and no one will benefit, in the long run, from having parents in that caliber. Parents should not monitor their teenagers with GPS systems like in the 3rd text meanwhile they shouldn’t leave their kids to fend for themselves. Children should be controlled, helped and monitored, but not carried through life by you or anyone else.
Clothing is something that defines a person, and allows society to have an outlook on an individual’s lifestyle and beliefs. Unlike criticizing other material things like a car, a home or even something as simple as a television set, criticism of clothing is very personal. This suggests that there is a high correlation between clothing and personal identity and values. (Breward, pg.1) Clothing in a sense has the ability to communicate thought. However, similarly to art interpretations, this does not mean that any two people will perceive these visual aesthetics similarly.