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Hernando Today

Marketing Consumer Savagery

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By DOMENICK J. MAGLIO, PH.D., Neo Traditionalist

Hernando Today

Published: January 9, 2009

The time has arrived to examine our handiwork. We started with local newspaper advertising then television, Blue Light Specials, infomercials, to the annual Black Friday shopping frenzy. Too many people have been stricken by obsessive materialism.

Our children are taught by the media to desire the latest trendy labels. The parents are accomplices to this brainwashing by encouraging these fads through rushing out and buying the item to insure their child's acceptance and popularity. They often do not have the courage to say "no" to the child's demands. The child's future identity becomes attached to possessions, not what really matters.

Americans are becoming so consumed by their things that they are willing to trample, fight or even kill another person to simply upgrade a product.

Consumer savagery became undeniable on November 28, 2008, Black Friday. Two thousand people in the Valley Stream, Long Island Wal-Mart broke through the door, stomping a security guard. He was killed. In California, two men in a Toys-R-Us store shot each other dead over a dispute between their wives. These atrocities happened over obtaining a discount item before the other shoppers grabbed it.

The housing bubble that just burst should be a shocking eye-opening phenomena. It started with envy and ended with greed. Even though many in middle class America had perfectly adequate housing, they saw many new features and wanted them now. This simple envy was given a new marketing twist by the real estate industry as the best investment method of increasing wealth. This new wrinkle spread by home improvement television shows of "flipping" homes became a frenzy of greed for an incredible number of Americans.

Just like a novice becoming intoxicated in a gambling casino and throwing reason to the wind, average Americans bid up home prices. In a few years, home prices rose two or three times their previous value. Disregarding the reality that what goes up must come down, these Americans gambled their future peace-of-mind and financial security on "making a fast buck." Greed and envy overtook reason as guiding our middle-class American life.

The marketing barrage of consumerism has corrupted us. We no longer define our children and ourselves by our character and accomplishments but through our possessions. This change will continue to break down civil behavior. Americans will see more seemingly senseless behavior that disregards the sanctity of life for the gaining of a few dollars.

The only antidote for this breakdown of civilized behavior is a shift back to defining ourselves by our decency. It is our good works of following the Golden Rule that will eliminate these inhumane acts. Realizing our God-given purpose of our life on Earth places everything into perspective. We must have a more meaningful existence than being a purchaser of products, or we will see more acts of violence over inanimate objects. Our lives should be put into spiritual balance, or we will be overwhelmed as a society. Vulgar, animalistic acts of "want-lust" will be minimized in a moral society.

Madison Avenue marketing and our Federal government's misguided pushing credit down our throats to create our consumer economy are making all of us susceptible to greed. The unintended consequence of a consumer economy is becoming evident. Greed gone wild is dissolving the moral fiber of our society leading us into chaos.

Our education and religious institutions and especially parents can counteract this propaganda by teaching moral lessons to stop living the life of excessive materialism. People that are out of spiritual balance face a meaningless existence. Consumer savagery is one symptom of the need to have a more meaningful purpose in life.

Dr. Maglio is the author of Invasion Within and Essential Parenting. He is a psychotherapist and the owner/director of Wider Horizons School. Visit: www.drmaglio.com.

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