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In America, our economy is based on consumerism. We consume much more than we manufacture in the modern day United States. Literally, buying stuff we don't really need fuels our economy. Because of this, corporations spend millions of dollars annually to find ways for us to cough up our hard-earned cash. Every year the Super Bowl is only a few minutes of gameplay followed by hours of commercials trying to sell us everything from the new pizza at Pizza Hut to a new Ford truck.
.........
REALLY?
Is that what the Super Bowl is about? I guess you're right. My boss pointed out to me a while back that such was when all the new commercials came out.........but I never made the connection to the above. My favorite Subaru Forester commercial, when the car first came out, about the perky little agent, is linked on Youtube to the Super Bowl........but I never realized that it was all about that!
Of course, I suppose it might help the learning process if I even watched this Super Bowl.
So tell me, "What is this thing you Americans call the Super Bowl?"
(that's a rhetorical question)
Basically, if we are conditioned because of this great game to watch the influences to tell us to buy everything, then what conditions us to watch the game..........since I obliviously was absent that day.
Is that what the Super Bowl is about? I guess you're right. My boss pointed out to me a while back that such was when all the new commercials came out.........but I never made the connection to the above.
I cannot recall ever purchasing anything that was ever advertised on any Superbowl, ever. Bud and Coca-Cola? No thanks. My insurance company is a mutual, so they don't advertise. Does Levi or Dickies advertise? I buy those occasionally. That's probably the best chance for advertising working for me -- blue jeans.
Otherwise, it's just more of the same crap that I don't want. At least that one day each year, the advertisements for the crap I don't want are a bit funny and intelligent. Too bad EVERY day isn't Superbowl Sunday on Madison Avenue.
Some sociologists have come to the conclusion that America has become a boderline personality society.
Borderline personality disorder can be described as "I am not happy, it must be your fault"
This, in my mind, is what has happened to America. We have told everyone that they are so special, that they are so gifted, that they are perfect, that when the world starts rejecting them, it immediately turns into "everyone elses fault"
You can not change the actions of other people. Your children, your spouse, your parents, your friends, let alone people on the other side of the country you do not know. America needs a "take ownership" moment. We are smart enough, pretty enough, and gosh darn it, we aren't good enough all the time. And that isn't everyone elses fault, its yours, and mine, and each of us individually.
I do think some of this is down to a lack of God in peoples' lives.
Money can't buy happiness but it can certainly alleviate stress when you have enough to pay your bills and put food on the table.
However, people have been deluded into thinking that if they own certain things, that will make them feel a certain way. They're promised a feeling of happiness, inclusiveness, warmth, even love.
Those are things you get from God.
I think if people spent more time being grateful for their blessings and extending a helping hand to those in need, they'd be less obsessed with what car they drive or owning that brand-new Coach bag.
I do think some of this is down to a lack of God in peoples' lives.
Money can't buy happiness but it can certainly alleviate stress when you have enough to pay your bills and put food on the table.
However, people have been deluded into thinking that if they own certain things, that will make them feel a certain way. They're promised a feeling of happiness, inclusiveness, warmth, even love.
Those are things you get from God.
I think if people spent more time being grateful for their blessings and extending a helping hand to those in need, they'd be less obsessed with what car they drive or owning that brand-new Coach bag.
And yet, 70% of Americans identify themselves as Christians.
Perhaps it is God that is causing this, since so many of us are Christians
No, this has nothing to do with religion or lack thereof. It has to do with our modern society and instant gratification of any want and desire. Humans can exercise self control, without religion.
In America, our economy is based on consumerism. We consume much more than we manufacture in the modern day United States. Literally, buying stuff we don't really need fuels our economy. Because of this, corporations spend millions of dollars annually to find ways for us to cough up our hard-earned cash. Every year the Super Bowl is only a few minutes of gameplay followed by hours of commercials trying to sell us everything from the new pizza at Pizza Hut to a new Ford truck.
Much of popular culture and entertainment seems to be focused on instilling a widespread universal sense of shame and inadequacy in many different types of people. Our media holds an unrealistic image of beauty that most women aren't born with in idolizing rail thin super models or surgically altered voluptuous vixens with very curvy chests and behinds (i.e. Nicki Minaj, Kim Kardashian). We have TV shows about people competing to lose weight. Commercials on TV telling you how to lose stomach fat and get "Hip Hop abs". Men are taught that the ideal male physique is super-ripped eight pack abs and chiseled muscles and nothing less.
Even if we don't worship money and material things society finds a way for us to become parishioners at the church of consumption. Consumerism is so deeply rooted in our society that even friendships and romantic relationships have come to involve money and consumerism. Relationships have become cost-benefit. Dates have become like job interviews in which where we went to college, what we do for a living and how much money is in our bank account is more important than what is in our hearts and minds. The very real idea that if we have the right car, the right shoes, the right clothes and cologne, we can get the girl we want. Every other product advertised on TV and the internet has Freudian overtones that say, "hey, this *insert* body spray, pair of shoes, car, acne gel, breathmint etc. will make you irresistible to a potential mate or enhance your status amongst your peers".
It gets to the point where many people are unconsciously full of self-hate. Fairer skinned white women are subliminally culturally encouraged to want to be tan and darker skinned women are taught by our society that lighter skin is better. Both black kids who have honest dreams of having real jobs and normal lives and white kids in the suburbs are made to feel incredibly bad about themselves through a mainstream watered-down Hip Hop culture that glorifies growing up in the ghetto and living a violent lifestyle of selling drugs, killing and gang banging to somehow afford a life of meaningless shiny material trinkets. But time and time again, kids do whatever to conform to this destructive popular Hip Hop culture of unsustainable consumer excess:
In our consumerist culture, being happy with what you have is an absolute no-no, no matter who you are. Every different type of person is made to feel bad about themselves through media-perpetauted stereotypes. If you are white, you should feel bad about it because white people have privilege and have it so much better than everyone. If you are black you should feel bad about it because black people cause so much violent crime and don't know how to act in public. If you are Asian, you should feel bad about it because Asians are seen as a bunch of nerds who can't get girls. If you are rich, you should feel bad about it because you don't know what people go through in the hood. If you are poor, you should feel bad about it because you are lazy and too dumb to get a real job. The list goes on and on...
Everybody in America seems to be trying to compensate for a huge spiritual hole in their lives through materialism or consumption. Millions of Americans are deep in debt all in the name of consumption. Unhealthy consumption, in itself, manifests itself in many different forms here in America today from going into debt for conspicuous consumption in buying expensive clothes and or cars to overeating to alcoholism and drug addiction. Overeating has been theorized to cause the obesity explosion in America over the past few decades.
Different corporations find their niche hawking their goods and services to different demographics. Nike and Air Jordan find their niche selling overpriced slave-labor produced athletic sneakers worn by the pro's and the Hip Hop and ghetto elite, alike, to self-esteem starved black youth in economically blasted inner city areas.
When material things don't make us happy, many of us turn to alcohol and drugs to make us feel better about ourselves. Alcohol is a multibillion dollar business that pays a heavy price in our society. About half of all reported violent crime is directly tied to alcoholic intoxication. Thousands of people die on the roads because of drunk driving every year. Alcoholism is also one of the leading killers of Americans.
America is also number in the world in illegal drug abuse. As we speak, white suburban communities across America are experiencing a quiet heroin epidemic amongst their youth.
All of this unmanageable destructive out of control consumption in our society is the end product of America divorcing itself from God. Without God and spirituality, people just do whatever makes them feel good. When our society and culture is always telling everyone that you are too short, too fat, too skinny, too tall, too white, too black, too dark, too Asian, too fobby, too poor, too ghetto, too suburban etc., it gets to the point where everybody has itchy skin and wants to buy something that makes them feel better even if its only temporary. It is up to us as individuals to find God and spirituality and do what it is right by caring about others and our fellow man to stop this ridiculous cycle of destructive overconsumption.
Less is MORE.
When I was a kid, my mom always pointed out the impulsive need for consumerism here in the U.S.
We were really poor, and could not afford things. She always re-framed things in a way that made me think.. "Do we really need all this?"
Now that I'm grown up, I have a lot more things, and the more I have the less I feel I have.
And, I think commercialism also has its effects on making people feel they're always in a constant state of "need" when their needs get confused with actual depravity.
Also, if you visit your local Ikea, most of their furniture is like fashion furniture. There's so much 'hype' about what people need verses what they feel pressured to want. This $hitty @ss furniture won't hold up. What to buy next season? People are so flustered about what to buy like it's Armageddon.
Happiness is found from within, and if you visit parts of the world where people don't have much and don't know much about what's out there, their quality of life may not be as great but their quality of sense of community is strong.
I feel like the attitude of entitlement in consumerism de-fragments society and creates social isolation even more when material things seem more valuable than actual human beings.
But, we also live in a government that recognize the "corporation" as a "human being" with "human rights." Insanity. And, people get treated like objects w/o human rights even though it's written in the laws but there's always a loophole that goes back to the bottom dollar. Cus money speaks.
I do think some of this is down to a lack of God in peoples' lives.
Money can't buy happiness but it can certainly alleviate stress when you have enough to pay your bills and put food on the table.
However, people have been deluded into thinking that if they own certain things, that will make them feel a certain way. They're promised a feeling of happiness, inclusiveness, warmth, even love.
Those are things you get from God.
I think if people spent more time being grateful for their blessings and extending a helping hand to those in need, they'd be less obsessed with what car they drive or owning that brand-new Coach bag.
I have all those things and I'm an atheist. "god" has nothing to do with it. And I have never been deluded into thinking that owning a certain thing will make me feel anything but satisfied that I have fulfilled a material need (or even a "want").
I am grateful for my many blessings (many of which I have created for myself through hard work and discipline) and make a point of extending a helping hand to those in need. Again, "god" has nothing to do with it.
Materialism is the result of a spiritual void (not in a religious way but rather unfulfilled needs of the individual ego)
Yes, there are market forces that take advantage of this void in the collective ego, and our current government controlled market needs this weakness to continue the way it is set up, however the "illness" of materialism was not created by the market.
It is the diminution of the individual's importance, impact, and control over one's environment that comes with a highly regulated collective.
Even the "unibomber" understood the crippling of the individual's "soul" as a result of the collective making any particular individual essentially meaningless to the society as a whole.
Minus the religious tangent you are right on the money, OP. The whole thing was designed to make us whiny, dependent, unfulfilled, insecure, selfish, egoistical near-nutcases who live and function in a hand-to-mouth lifestyle... because those people make the best customers.
Which naturally leads to all the other charming traits of clinical Narcissism… "entitlement", grandiosity, lack of empathy, no accountability, etc. (sound familiar)?!
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