Tuesday 15 November 2016

Consumerism - BCOP100


In today's lecture, we looked at the idea of 'consumerism', and the material culture that we find ourselves living in. Consumerism is a big idea that has changed the world, just like capitalism. It's the ideology that we MUST consume more and more 'things', for example branded items like clothes, food and mobile phones. Such an idea has been influenced by the growing popularity of advertisement, which influences and tempts us to invest in the product that is being presented to us. Obviously advertisement can come in many different varieties, ranging from audio, visual and celebrity endorsement. Tactics such as these create envy and seduce us all into thinking that we all need to own a certain thing, in order to fit in with the rest of society.

However, these consumer tactics has created a 'throw-away society', in which material goods are being disposed off into land fill way before their expiry date. For example we discard of 1.5 million computers every year in the UK, 99% of which are in perfect working order [1]. Furthermore, the huge demand for luxury commodities create the need for billions of factories that in turn, release tonnes of carbon dioxide and other waste products into the environment - thus contributing to global warming. 

Although consumerism is directly linked to the rising global temperature and sea levels, it does have its benefits. Due to the consistent and rising demand for these material goods, consumerism does create thousands of jobs and is the primary reason for a growing, healthy economy. Therefore it is both good and bad. 

Consumerism to me is something that we are all part of (in the western world), and will remain something that we will all find hard to avoid. With a growing competitive world, it will always remain in a big cooperation's interest to sell their products to us in the most effective way, in order to gain an economic surplus. This is why I think that if anything, consumerism will only be exacerbated with the new and revolutionary ways of advertisement that these cooperations will enforce. We can however, consume more efficient and 'greener' technologies, along with adopting a more mindful outlook, we can remain to be consumers, but with a less destructive impact on the world around us.

[1] YouTube (2011). [online]. Big Ideas That Changed The World - Consumerism. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B1F42B1D1E0763A1 [Accessed 15th November 2016)

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