Board of Aldermen

Quick Note: This post will only deal with materialism's exclusivity to America. My theory of it's origin is not yet complete, so look for it on Tuesday or Wednesday. End Note

I'm just gonna throw it out there. I believe it is fair to assume that we are all in agreement that the form of materialism upon which we have settled is not exclusive to America. Western Europe and industrialized Asia are very close in GPD and personal expenditure to America across the board. So, in this state of global economics and the "global market," the geographic lines of separation do not aptly apply to nation-states in similar eco-political environments. Now this is not to say that America wave the big stick as the drum major in the annual materialism parade, but our notions stem from the other states sharing our current capitalist system. So what does this mean? Simply that the capitalist system we operate under as a fashion of our materialistic system is neither American in origin nor practice. So if it isn't American modernity causing materialism in our societies, why is it so constantly attributed to America? or is it...

OK so I can't answer that second part of the question. My first assumption here was that America is seen by the world as Materialism incarnate. But, it is a trait of much of the modern world. So, #1, is it truly attributed solely to America? Well, it is no secret that within America, we all place this title on our country. The simple fact that we're discussing this topic is pure proof that American's critique America for being Materialistic. I don't know about you all, but I have not spent much time in other countries discussing American capitalism lately. (That's not quite true; I do happen to know that the Blog members have also not done that). Because of this, it is somewhat difficult for me to get a good worldy handle on opinions towards America and materialism/capitalism. My general scientific leap and vast amount of time doing television research wherein American's tell me how the world thinks of us will allow me to assume that the
world does view us in this light. Again, although we all recognize that America is not alone in this occurrence, it is (seemingly) more prominently viewed as such.

So, #2, if America is not alone in its Materialism, why is it "lime-lighted" so? My conclusion is that American materialism is more prominent solely because America itself is prominent. Perhaps a blind sense of patriotism leads me to this, but I can NOT honestly say that American's are in a deeper pursuit of cultural desires beyond the acquisition of needs than the Euro's or Japanese are. For instance, Jaguar, Volvo, and Sony all have local markets that rival or beat American sales, and none of these companies manufactures products of "need." This leads me to an unfortunate impasse which I am forced to make an assumption to solve. There may be several reasons American materialism is more notable than across the globe, but my very debatable conclusion has fallen on this: America's level of "wealth" allows for a higher expenditure on many/most things, including so-called material goods. While America's Gross Domestic Product expenditure is almost twice that of other nations, our Gross Domestic Product expenditure PER CAPITA is not (we were soundly outspent by Luxembourg and rivaled by northern European countries oddly enough). So what this boils down to is that America spends more, but our people are spending no more than most other countries in our situation. Is it's simplest form, we have more, so we spend more and since we seem to spend more, we catch more guff about it, wrong or right.

This begs a good question: If materialism is good or evil, does that make America the most good or most evil? But that is a question for another day...

Stay tuned for pt. 2 - The Origins of Materialism, a distinctly political look at 16th Century political thought and class structure.

The more i think about this issue the more i am convinced that we need to call it something other than materialism. I'm fairly sure conspicuous consumption is the standard term for the thing we are talking about; there a number of political and economic attitudes tied to this term--these attitudes are the sort of thing i think the woman from the discussion about Buddhism is speaking of.

I don't think it's America's wealth so much as her relative size that makes us the target of criticism for our materialism/conspicuous consumption. I'll lazily rely on your research that Luxembourg outspent us, but America gets the focus because we're big and kind of draw a lot of attention to ourselves with our We-love-us, AMERICA'S-#1-MOFO style. Not to say that Luxembourg lacks national pride, but still, I feel the point is valid.