Materialistic Delusion
Materialistic Delusion: How artificial social norms confine people to live past their means to achieve the illusion of social status.
MORPHEUS: “It’s that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it? [Consumerism] is everywhere, it’s all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth”
NEO: “What truth”?
MORPHEUS: “That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, were born into bondage… kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.”
Its no surprise that in our ever-changing, ever-developing world of globalization and over-production, that there are individuals out there that question how we have agreed to live our lives, but within the greater public there is still an ignorance regarding mass consumerism. The movie The Matrix (1999) was probably one of the first globally presented critiques on how our social and political constructs work and attempt to provide us with a profitable and prosperous life. It questioned how we view the world and how the world views us. Perhaps though, it only helped create a small percent of our population’s defiance of the regulated and forcefully marketed world we are told to believe in. Our world, specifically in first world developed countries, has worked its way into a contrived and manipulated experience of the American Dream that defines success and prosperity as manufactured goods. For its purpose, this paper will focus on the United States of America and Canada as a unified being of North American spirit, rooted in the belief of a better tomorrow. In North America we are raised to believe that compared to the rest of the
MORPHEUS: “It’s that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it? [Consumerism] is everywhere, it’s all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth”
NEO: “What truth”?
MORPHEUS: “That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, were born into bondage… kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind.”
Its no surprise that in our ever-changing, ever-developing world of globalization and over-production, that there are individuals out there that question how we have agreed to live our lives, but within the greater public there is still an ignorance regarding mass consumerism. The movie The Matrix (1999) was probably one of the first globally presented critiques on how our social and political constructs work and attempt to provide us with a profitable and prosperous life. It questioned how we view the world and how the world views us. Perhaps though, it only helped create a small percent of our population’s defiance of the regulated and forcefully marketed world we are told to believe in. Our world, specifically in first world developed countries, has worked its way into a contrived and manipulated experience of the American Dream that defines success and prosperity as manufactured goods. For its purpose, this paper will focus on the United States of America and Canada as a unified being of North American spirit, rooted in the belief of a better tomorrow. In North America we are raised to believe that compared to the rest of the
Cited: Martin, Ann Smart. “Makers, Buyers and Users: Consumerism as a Material Culture Framework.” Winterthur Portfolio, 28. 2/3 (Summer-Autumn, 1993), 141-157 Cowan, Robin and William and Swann, G.M Belk, Russel W. “Possessions and the Extended Self” Journal of Consumer Research 15:2 (Sept. 1988) 139-168 Mihalcea, Raluca Materialism - What Matters. (2003-2013) http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/materialism.htm Buzney, Catherine and Marcoux, John