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Kylah Gunter
Steven Case
HMXP 102
April 18, 2016

Consumerism: Meaningful or Ultimate Concern

In a short essay called “How Do Our Kids Get So Caught up in Consumerism?” by Brian
Swimme, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, he discusses the impact
consumerism has on kids today and whether it has meaning or as Tillich says an “ultimate
concern”. An “ultimate concern” is a concern about something that does not have meaning nor
affect towards oneself. In a way, consumerism is an ultimate concern yet it still has meaning
behind it, it just depends on how you use it. Most companies use consumerism to brainwash
children to buy into different products. They use social media, advertisements and a celebrity in
which they look up to in order to carry out this theory of brainwashing. In today’s time,
consumerism is not meaningful but an “ultimate concern” or a scam to get not only children but
people in general to purchase what they are offering. However, consumerism does not only affect
the kids by using these things but rather the human race as a whole due to the fact that the world
is populating quicker than we expected. How we are becoming more concerned about expanding
and not realizing that we are actually hurting our own species and others in the process.
Within an article called, “Consumerism ‘eating the future’ by Andy Coghlan, a reporter for
New Scientist, it talks about how consumerism has not only impact the present but will also
impact the future. Yet he is not just talking specifically about advertisements and franchises but
rather human nature as a whole. He talks about global warming and how the human race is over-
running the planet like a virus. We are using the word survive as an excuse to expand into other
territories that seems available to us. Even though the human population has quadrupled does not
mean it is okay to over step your boundaries. “Biologists have shown that it’s a natural tendency
of living creatures to fill up all available habitat and use up all available resources,” says William
Rees of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “That’s what underlies
Darwinian evolution, and species that do it best are the ones that survive, but we do it better than
any other species,” he told me prior to the conference. This does not just affect us today but it
affects our children, our children’s children, and the other generations to come. This will become
their problem and by then it will be too late. “We need to learn to live within the means of
nature,” says Rees. “That means sharing and redistribution of wealth, and for that we need
leadership at the highest level to understand that the competitive instinct and the drive for power
and more resources is mutually destructive, so governments must act in our collective interest.”
Rees is giving strong points due to the fact that we are already going through crisis within the
weather. What is it going to take us to realize enough is enough?
Paul Tillich, a German American existentialist philosopher, wrote a short essay called “What
Faith Is”. In Tillich’s own words, “Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned: the dynamics
of faith are the dynamics of man’s ultimate concern (Tillich, 247).” This relates to consumerism
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because we put so much faith towards consumerism no matter how high the risk. Most people
end up spending their last because of that satisfactory or fulfillment. Tillich also talks about
“ultimate fulfillment” or in other words selfishness. We use consumerism as a fulfillment, by
doing or getting something that makes us happy despite others emotions and opinion. However,
this fulfillment can be threatened if the demand or want for it is not obeyed. “The threat is the
exclusion from such fulfillment through national extinction and individual catastrophe (Tillich
248).” William James an American philosopher and psychologist, talks about fulfilment and how
it should be the achievement of something desired or promised as a whole and not as an
individual. Decisions should not be determined by how a person feels in that moment but how it
is going to affect them and everyone around them in the end. For example, social media is a main
stream for consumerism because young adults and young children use them. I have had my own
experience with buying certain things mainly because it was over all of my social medias. It was
to the point where I felt I need to buy it because it was everywhere and I felt the need to have one
as well. It was almost as if I wanted to be included in the trend. As young people when we see
certain over every social media and everyone is wearing it, we feel the need to get it so that we
may feel relevant or even important. As Tillich said, we are more concerned over things that does
not have meaning nor affect towards oneself or others for that matter. Within another personal
experience with social media, I remember strolling through one of my favorite online store page
on Instagram. I do not always by from this store but when I saw one of my ultimate celebrity
(Zendaya a famous actor, singer, dancer and fashion icon) with a dress that looked gorgeous on
her, I knew I had to have it. I craved that dress so badly, to where it cost me every penny I had,
yet I did not care because I wanted to look like Zendaya. When the dress arrived, it looked so
gorgeous and I was over whelmed with joy. After wearing it twice, I realized that I spent all my
savings for a dress that looks like any old dress you can buy out of any store. Yet the only reason
why I purchased it from that specific store is because that’s where Zendaya got her dress from
and in that moment I did not even think about the long-term effects of my decisions but rather
the short-term.
However, consumerism does more to people, especially children than society may believe.
Consumerism can also affect our critical thinking as well. Amanda Hiner, Ph.D., a British and
American Literature who is over the Department of English here at Winthrop University,
discusses “How Electronic Media Consumption Impacts Our Critical Thinking Skills.”
Consumerism is huge in using advertisements in which is show through electronic devices. Hiner
talks about a tern called “cognitive control” which is used by neuro scientist to describe the
mind’s ability to filter environmental distractions and attend to important and relevant
information, the process of controlling and evaluating one’s own thoughts deliberate and explicit
ways in order to make one’s thinking better and more rational (Hiner 210). If children believe
that consumerism is more important than anything else is then how will they be able to function
through life? Swimme once said, “Before a child enters first grade science class, and before
entering in any real way into our religious ceremonies, a child will have soaked in 30,000
advertisements and the time our teenagers spend absorbing ads is more that their total stay in
high school. It is crazy but being a young adult, I can actually agree with what Swimme is saying
because it is true. Within my own personal experience, as a child I would go to school and make
sure all of my work was done just so that I may watch television in which I would spend at least
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five to six hours doing. Within those hours, I can honestly say I saw more advertisement for
different products than words in a book. Whether I was cooking, cleaning or trying to read my
eyes would shift from what I was originally doing only to be watching television. I have what
Amanda Hiner like to call “The Techno-Brain” which is a highly adaptive brain wired by
constant multi-tasking to respond quickly to constant interruption, task-switching and visual
stimulation. This not only affected my critical thinking but it also affected my ability to see. I
have consumed so much television as a child to where I now have to wear glasses in order to
read a book or look at television. The fulfilment that I once got and craved from watching TV
and advertisement cost me my vision in the end. John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, once
said, “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary
opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the
power, would be justified in silencing mankind (Mill 53).” He is saying how can people live in
happiness and peace knowing that it one child or soul is suffering for it.

In conclusion, consumerism can have many meanings behind it but how we choose to use it
makes it either meaningful or an “ultimate concern.” Most companies use consumerism to
brainwash children to buy into different products. They use social media, advertisements and a
celebrity in which they look up to in order to carry out this theory of brainwashing. In today’s
time, consumerism is not meaningful but an “ultimate concern” or a scam to get not only
children but people in general to purchase what they are offering. Society has mistaken
fulfilment for selfishness because people put their happiness first without knowledge of others
and they live freely while someone else suffers. They use fulfillment as a crutch to get
consumers by doing or getting something that makes them happy despite others emotions and
opinion, yet this fulfillment can be threatened if the demand or want for it is not obeyed. Yet,
consumerism can also affect our critical thinking as well. However, consumerism does not only
affect the kids by using these things but rather the human race as a whole due to the fact that the
world is populating quicker than we expected. How we are becoming more concerned about
expanding and not realizing that we are actually hurting our own species and others in the
process. Consumerism is an “ultimate concern” or in other words a concern about something that
does not have meaning nor affect towards oneself. In a way, consumerism is an ultimate concern
yet it still has meaning behind it, it just depends on how you use it.
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Work Cited
1. Swimme, Brian “How Do Our Kids Get So Caught up in Consumerism?” The Human
Experience Ninth Edition, Tapestry Press, Ltd., 2015. Print
2. Tillich, Paul “What Faith Is” The Human Experience Ninth Edition, Tapestry Press, Ltd.,
2015. Print
3. Hiner, Amanda “How Electronic Media Consumption Impacts Our Critical Thinking Skills.”
The Human Experience Ninth Edition, Tapestry Press, Ltd., 2015. Print
4. The Human Experience Ninth Edition, Tapestry Press, Ltd., 2015. Print
5. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17569-consumerism-is-eating-the-future/