The obsession with brands
We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra...
Some of you just want to fit in. You have to be using a product like iPad and iPhone, otherwise you are not cool. Your furniture has to be bough from IKEA. Your daily coffee has to be from Starbucks. You have to visit Disney once in your life. You have to watch Oscars. You have to like certain celebrities. You have to enjoy a specific genre of music to fit on. You must have a facebook and a linkedin. If you are not a tumblr or a reddit user, you don't fit in. It just goes on and on. The infamous Cult of Mac spans far and wide, with a deep obsession with anything and everything Apple. Starbucks blankets America, driving endless droves of coffee-lovers to its baristas. Whole Foods fans swear by the huge supermarket chain's pesticide free cantaloupes.
This is taught in your class rooms :
Throughout the course of human history, poverty has been the rule, riches
the exception. Societies in the past were called affluent when their ruling
classes lived in abundance and luxury. Even in the rich countries of the
past, the great majority of people struggled for mere subsistence. Today in
this country minimum standards of nutrition, housing, and clothing are
assured, not for all, but for the majority. Beyond these minimum needs,
such former luxuries as homeownership, durable goods, travel, recreation,
and entertainment are no longer restricted to a few
.
A society of mass consumption is contrary to a society of mass poverty. In a society of mass poverty, the average level of consumption is low, and most of the people consume a small amount of goods
What a load of crap ^^^^^^^^^^
Within the current economic system of "perpetual growth", we risk being locked into a mode of development that is:
destructive, in the long run, to the environment
a contributing factor to poverty around the world
a contributing factor to hunger amongst such immense wealth
and numerous other social and ecological problems
As consumption increases, the resource base has to expand to meet growth and related demands. If the resource base expands to other people’s lands, then those people don’t necessarily get to use those resources either. You rape their resources. Just look at the phoney Iraq War.
Junk-food chains, including KFC and Pizza Hut, are under attack from major environmental groups in the United States and other developed countries because of their environmental impact. Intensive breeding of livestock and poultry for such restaurants leads to deforestation, land degradation, and contamination of water sources and other natural resources. For every pound of red meat, poultry, eggs, and milk produced, farm fields lose about five pounds of irreplaceable top soil. The water necessary for meat breeding comes to about 190 gallons per animal per day, or ten times what a normal Indian family is supposed to use in one day, if it gets water at all.
Overall, animal farms use nearly 40 percent of the world’s total grain production. In the United States, nearly 70 percent of grain production is fed to livestock.
Food is a commodity.
Much of the best agricultural land in the world is used to grow commodities such as cotton, sisal, tea, tobacco, sugar cane, and cocoa, items which are non-food products or are marginally nutritious, but for which there is a large market.
Millions of acres of potentially productive farmland is used to pasture cattle, an extremely inefficient use of land, water and energy, but one for which there is a market in wealthy countries.
More than half the grain grown in the United States (requiring half the water used in the U.S.) is fed to livestock, grain that would feed far more people than would the livestock to which it is fed.
society has gone opposite of fight club. People want that six pack, anyone and everyone now can be a rockstar or celebrity thanks to youtube. Millenials lost generation would kill to have a boring office job. Ikea is now more popular than ever, amazon sales through the roof, everybody needs a smartphone.
Consumerism: The things you own, end up owning you