Consumerism & AFFLUENZA – How Society Shapes Our Thinking About Happiness
Sreven Nguyen, PH.D. Within the past several decades, an alarming trend has developed, one that goes far beyond just “keeping up with the Joneses.” You see, no longer is it enough to simply “keep up.” It seems that in today’s microwave mentality, we have to have things, and we have to have them right now. Everything becomes a necessity. We no longer eat to live. We live to eat. We no longer shop to survive. We survive to shop. Or as I heard it on the radio – shop til you drop, then crawl! We have, in fact, become a society of conspicuous consumption [spending lavishly on goods and services for the sole purpose of showing off] and consumerism [equating happiness with buying and consuming goods]. There is a name/description/label to this madness. It’s called AFFLUENZA , formed from the words affluence (wealth) and influenza (also known as the flu). Affluenza is defined as (1) The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with t