Introduction
Affluenza: The All-consuming Epidemic is essentially a “must read” book for any educator or financial counselor who has debated the concepts of voluntary simplicity, happiness, “keeping up with Joneses,” “stuff,” over consumption, and “enough” with the students or clients. As an extension of extensively celebrated 1997 PBS TV documentary called Affluenza, this epic book cleverly uses illnesses terminology in its chapter headings to give a description of a powerful virus called Affluenza.
The chapter headings describe Affluenza with terms like aches, convulsions, congestion, exhaustion, scars, among others. Basically this book is divided into 3 sections, which similarly have medical overtones. These include “Part One: Symptoms,” “Part Two: Causes,” and “Part Three: Treatment.” For that reason, this paper reviews chapters 1 to 7 of this book.
Part one is composed of fourteen chapters. Generally, all these 14 chapters offer evidence of extent to which the concept of Affluenza has truly taken hold. In chapter 1, “Shopping Fever,” the authors notes that the two thirds of $11 trillion Unites States economy is actually spent on the consumer goods.
In addition, this chapter notes that U.S citizens spend six hours in every week shopping and just 40 minutes in each week playing with their youngsters (Graaf et al 15). This is to say that in a year the average American spends roughly 312 hours watching TV commercials. Thus, I think advertisements fuels our behaviors of seeing the self-worth in the material goods. These authors skillfully describes how United States shopping malls like Mall of America and Potomac Mills have become key tourist attractions and how online shopping in recent times has turned into lucrative Affluenza carrier.
In the second chapter, “A Rash of Bankruptcies,” these authors competently describes the rising credits cards availability, low rate of savings in the country, and finally the startling truth that one in seventy U.S citizens file for bankruptcy. In every year, the advertisers spend a lot in their efforts to convince the consumers to buy their products. Nonetheless, the concept of bankruptcy as mentioned above results from the fact that the advertisement expenses are passed to them through high prices.
The third chapter, “Swollen Expectations,” explains various ways that U.S citizens nowadays have higher material expectations than the previous generations (Graaf et al 36). These material expectations include electronic goods, cars, housing among others. The difference between baselines of someone’s needs versus wants lies in the level of persuasion in the advertisements. In fact, these high expectations result from the way the advertisements play on our anxiety and envy feelings. The mentioned material things are used as measures of attractiveness and success.
In a skillful way, the authors in chapter 4, “Chronic Congestion,” explains pitfalls of being “all stuffed up.” According to this chapter, the problems that result include large increase in number of jam packed houses and cars, self-storage facilities, traffic congestions among others. The fifth chapter, “The Stress of Excess,” expounds on the exhaustion and stress that various individuals feel in their lives as a result of sleep deprivation, time famine, possession overload, and too many choices. Chapter 6, “Family Convulsions,” explains the associated problems like overscheduled children, high divorce rates, and individuals living together as families but not connecting with each other.
In the seventh chapter, “Dilated pupils,” the authors in an expert manner talk about children’s advertising and their obesity rates and television viewing habits (Graaf et al 59). From their discussion, it is true that the children are fastest growing segment of consumer market and corporations have been spending a lot in marketing their products to these young individuals in the society. These Corporations have realized that American lifestyle starts at an early age since materialism starts creating the envy factor during this age. For that reason, this clearly explains the rationale behind the huge advertisement spending to target the younger generation.
Works cited
De, Graaf J, Thomas H. Naylor, and David Wann. Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic. San Francisco, Calif: Berrett-Koehler, 2005.
