Friday, June 15, 2012

Consumerism

   After the World War I, mass production of manufactured goods suffered in United States and another countries of the developed world a big expansion causing what we now know as a consumer society...

   In the United States, the system of mass production started in the World War I, and now millions of goods sprouding in the production lines. Industrialists fear was the danger of overproduction.(That the would come a point that people have enough goods and they simply stop buy. Up to that point, the majority of products sold in terms of need. While reach people were accustomed to luxury goods, for the millions of American workers most of the products were promoted as necessities, goods like shoes, clothing and even cars were advertised from they utility and durability. The purpose of advertising was to show the usefulness of the products, nothing more. What the corporations realized they have to do, was tranform the way the majorities of americans thought about products. They wanted to shift U.S from a needs to desires culture, they wanted to train people to desire, to want new things. They wanted to change into a new mentality in America. For them, men desires must exceed his needs.

     But, What is consumerism? After all, all of us are consumers, every of us go shoping and the society, obviously, can´t function without some level of consumption, so, consumerism puts consumption in the center of the modern economy, and everything is done to persuade us to go and consume more. Advertisements are in signs, newspapers, magazines and television, we are bombarded day by day by this advertising messages. We may think that they are selling something different. Different products, different brands, different life styles, but at the same time, they are selling one big idea: That when all of us consume, we will have a better life. Almost unnoticed, consumerism is become our principal pastime, our ideology, it's a very seductive idea, but it's also a harmful idea. We become a generation of compulsive shopaholics.

   So... What do you think? And what about you? Do you buy only when you need it?

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