Our Broken World: A series of ever-changing opinions

Our Consumerism-Based Economy

     Our society is based near wholly on consumerism. People, at the end of their life, are valued by how much money they have, land ownership, investments and many other things, having little to absolutely nothing to do with what kind of person they actually were or how many moments of joy they had in their lives. Humans feel the need to work towards this to preserve their legacy, going through things to get more money to buy more meaningless objects that only bring a short term joy, if any at all.

     Go to school. Get a job. Own a house. Start a family. All this is just how much we rely on the system to label ourselves and how much we're worth. As time has progressed, home ownership has been skyrocketing, from becoming the occasional thing to being the staple expectation; a thing that people own because it has been told to them that their value lies in home ownership. Another thing, people are pressured to have families, all their life hearing 'when you get married' or 'when you have kids', then pressuring these people into buying and buying and buying toys, saying 'that's what a good parent does', once again feeding into the illusion that worth should be measured on how much a person owns.

     Due to all this, people just buy useless things that nothing for your mental health. Think back to the last time you felt happy with life. For many people it's different; some people are most happy when they get to create memories with their loved ones, others when they are creating, and some are most happy when they have the chance to put good into the world. Thing is, most of our lives are taken up by work or school, as if our whole life revolves around just that, and everything else is just a hobby.

     I have a commitment to school. It is the number one most important thing in my life, and it is the last thing to be sacrificed, even after my mental health. Everything else I do is just a hobby; writing, having friends, going to conventions and learning about what I'm actually interested in. School has been the center of my attention all my life, because that will be what gets me into college, then a good job, and a steady-paced life in which I will eventually die at an old age.

     However, I have been recently looking to find a way to shift my focus and determining my self value from school, and instead thinking of school as something that will give me the support I need in order to find a voice and speak up, and to make change. I believe that my value as a person should be determined on how much I stand up for and with others, and how much I am able to make other people feel good about themselves without the need for an absurd amount of objects. I feel no obligation to be a future home owner, because I would rather travel and learn more with every passing minute instead of settling in one place to repeat the same peaceful cycle each day.

     I know many people with this same ideal as well, but have sacrificed it all because they caved into the need for a sense of belonging, to be accepted by society, and have ultimately been very unhappy with their lives. As humans, it is only natural to feel the need to be part of a group; we are pack animals, after all. But with the development of technology, we need to depend on others less and less, because we have machines to do much of this now. We do not need to form tribes and hunt for animals, because we have no need to hunt, with all the domesticated animals and farms we have.

     Due to this separated manner, depression is something that is likely to form from the feeling of loneliness. We seek the sense of belonging by acting just as everyone else does, and it creates a strange vortex that continues on through the centuries. Humans value themselves on the money they have and the things they own because society said so. This consumerism based economy is the problem, and it was our fault that money grew and became everything. We need to change that.

     It has been said, many times. Money can't buy happiness. Yet, we still act as if it does. Why?