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The Double-Edged Sword of American Materialism
The flood of material goods has been a mainstay in American culture for several decades now, arguably taking hold in the post-war period but with roots that extend to centuries bygone. As citizens, we are perpetually awash in an inundation of things — and new ones at that. We are accustomed to a world of mass production, of robust inventories, of an overwhelming cornucopia of consumer goods. We are also accustomed to a world of glossy, slick advertising, of the art of persuasion, of the lure of the fresh, the new, the cutting-edge, the avant-garde.
As tightly woven into a consumerist culture as we are, materialism has suffered no shortage of verbal rebukes in recent years. Increasingly, a mounting awareness of the ills of consumerism fashions itself at the cultural fore. Perhaps we’re hedonistic, some say. Perhaps we’re exploitive as a nation and should feel ravaged with guilt for our economic opportunism, others say. Perhaps we’ve lost sight of what matters in life, still others anxiously remark, fearing that things have replaced values. None of these fears are without some merit. But we should be careful that in considering them, we do not demonize the so-called consumerist culture, for it too is not without merit.
