The New Consumerism: Is it a Want, or a Necessity?
by Barry Wright
Essay: The New Consumerism: Is it a Want, or a Necessity?
Pages: 10
Rating: 3 stars
Download Links:
• The New Consumerism: Is it a Want, or a Necessity?.pdf
• The New Consumerism: Is it a Want, or a Necessity?.doc
The basic needs of life are food, water, shelter, and oxygen. They are the four materials required for human life to
flourish and prosper. However, as the human mind has evolved more in the past century, people have become
more materialistic, and wants have become necessity. As life progresses, new and better materials come out that
the mind will latch onto as a want, and it will read that want as a need. United States Americans in the, twenty-first
century’s world, are the guiltiest of all when it comes to be too materialistic, and it is becoming a major issue.
The human mind interprets information, and then does whatever it can do with that. When someone looks at an
item after having used a previous version of it (an IPhone for example), most people will instantly think that they
want it just because it is ‘better’ or just because it is new. The line between want and need is broken in most minds
like this considering that the person just does not need a bigger screen to do the same tasks they did before, he
could just bring it closer to his face. The line is not drawn just for electronics, but also for clothes, food, and any
other luxury in the world. Granted that food is needed to survive, not all foods are needed. An example of that is
someone choosing between salad and pizza, because most go for the greased up pile of bread and cheese instead
of the nutrient rich salad (without dressing, of course). It is almost as though wants and needs only come up just
because there is some kind of material…
John Kenneth Galbraith, in his book The Dependence Effect states just that throughout the pages. He talks about
how people have forgotten what their needs are, and the wants evolved into what they cannot live without. The
only reason...