Ah, the holiday season. A time for sharing, gratitude, concern for your fellow man, and time spent making memories with loved ones that will last a lifetime. No wonder so many people love the holiday season, yet others can hardly even bear to endure it. The Western world has added an innovation to the holiday season that has nothing to do with a Savior or gratitude or new beginnings; shopping. Year after year the shopping season seems to start earlier and earlier. No longer are people starting their shopping at midnight on Black Friday but rather skipping out on Thanksgiving dinner all together to try and catch the sales. The sacred is out and commercialized consumerism is in, but could it be an illness that is affecting those partaking in it?
According to Wikipedia the word affluenza is a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. The symptoms of affluenza are shopping fever, chronic stress, hyper commercialism, fractured families, and global infection, not to mention the fattening of the pockets of the high-ups of corporations. The relationship between prosperity and stress is possession overload and that most prosperous countries seem also to be the most stressful.
Advertising influences our lives and buying habits by telling us we can meet our nonmaterial needs through material ends and this usually starts in childhood. Such advertising is hyper-produced during and just before the shopping season. We are a society that is preoccupied with material things at the expense of our children. Most Americans are in an immense amount of debt, as well as the country as a whole. The more material objects a family has the more space they need and the less quality time they actually spend with each other. Not to mention that holidays such as Christmas and Hanukkah, which have traditions of gift giving, are turned into completely commercialized ritualism of what “I want” in disregard to what less fortunate individuals actually need.
Affluenza only widens the gap between the rich and the poor because the rich buy and easily discard items whereas the poor struggle to obtain items for their basic needs. Resource exhaustion is an almost complete depletion of resources and the only thing we can do about it is to adjust to simple living and use less. Simple and conscious living is also a cure and prevention for affluenza. Many are calling for a complete buying blackout from November 24th to January 31st, other than essential living items, as a way to protest not only consumerism but many other social injustices currently taking place.
Đăng nhận xét