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Submitted by bedot7982 on June 30, 2008
Category: Social Issues
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Affluenza: Who’s to Blame?
Affluenza is an epidemic outbreak caused by people’s materialistic, greedy need to buy things, which has resulted to the current struggles that our society is challenged with today (de Graff, Boe, 1998). The Public Broadcasting Service Production website on Affluenza defines this epidemic as:
1. The bloated, sluggish, and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses.
2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste, and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream.
3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth (PBS, 1998).
Affluenza has been affecting the United States for centuries and dates back to the 1600’s with the founders of the New World. Quakers and Puritans, who founded the New World, settled in Massachusetts with a belief that “material instincts would displace God from people’s hearts” and that “any excess wealth was to be shared with the poor” (PBS, 1998).
During the middle of the seventeenth-century, the Quaker’s and Puritan’s views on affluenza changed. Their “practice of simplicity” weakened as various opportunities emerged for businessmen and the economy thrived in prosperity (PBS 1998).
The affects of this epidemic were truly experienced by society in 1925 as materialism overpowered citizens with the introduction of General Motor’s “yearly automobile model change” (PBS, 1998). General Motor’s concept urged citizens to purchase a new vehicle on a yearly basis to keep up with the ever-changing trends and new developing styles in transportation. This transition marked the beginning point of “American consumer culture,” the crazed era of style and looks (PBS, 1998). At this point in time, people were no longer concerned about simplicity, but rather consumption. The main cultural concern focused on what looked right, what was in style, and what trend needed to be maintained....
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