American Materialism Essay

Everything in America is constantly changing except Americans themselves. The reality is that materialism has overcome the nation and has taken over the American people. The lives and minds of the American people are so consumed with materialism that they are losing their self-identity and self-concept in the process. Their desire for acquisition has eroded their innate sense of human value and has transferred it to material goods. Almost everything Americans touch or use has been the by-product of an intense and complex industrial system. Yet Americans are oblivious to the story-line behind everything they use because they are too focused on satisfying their individual wants now. This fixation on material goods has created manufactures and

All over America people are consuming almost every day, in some cases all the time. When Americans go shopping all they see is a product on a shelf, they don’t see the devastating toll that that product has on the environment. Americans’ devotion to lifestyles that focus on the accumulation of non-essential goods has led to a “throw-away mentality.” For example, manufactures design products to fail from television sets to washing machines to computers in order for people to have to throw them away and replace them (Vince). Manufactures deliberately make products fail so that they can sell more products. They know that American consumers will buy new products to replace old products because they are motivated by their “wants.” However, the problem is that manufactures are weakening the environment because the natural resources used to make these products are being constantly drained and then lost. For example, “the average American throws away over 68 pounds of textiles per year” (Whitehead). Not only does this show that Americans are extremely wasteful it also shows that manufactures only use short-term innovation to satisfy consumers. The author of “Everything Now,” explains that by changing the focus to peoples wants instead of needs has displaced the process of innovation. Thus, making it challenging to address future long-term problems (149). This means that short-term innovations have hidden consequences that will eventually surface. The more consumers demand the more damage manufactures are doing to the environment. America will soon have little to no resources if apathetic consumers don’t start buying less of the stuff they don’t need. Manufactures will not change unless the American people do so