Essay Competition “Human Values in the Age of Consumerism”
Essay Competition
“Human Values in the Age of Consumerism”
Write a short essay (between 1000 and 1200 words) that addresses the theme of ‘human values in the age of consumption’.
The essay can take its start from Stuart Ewen’s photograph of an old woman waiting for a bus under a glossy image in a cosmetic advertisement. The image expresses the tensions and ironies of our world where symbolic consumption has become part of everyday life.
We invite you to write about the impact of culture, permeated by commercial images and messages of desire, upon social and personal values, and on the importance of community and human interaction in society at large.
Very often, we all witness how things become valued expressions of identity, markers of social success or failure, fetishes substituting for human presence (“Show me what you have and I’ll tell you what you are”). Moreover, the aggressive expansion of consumerism has provoked the growth of anti-consumerist counter-culture, which insists on the need to be rather than to have. Even this response, however, might be taken to be a result of a consumer culture. In any case, the exploration of one’s relation to things in our time has become a way to explore the meaning of human life today.
Some of the questions you might address in your essay are suggested below (feel free to put forward your own for discussion!).
· How much of a home has this new environment become for us? Do you feel comfortable there?
· Do you share in the nostalgia for the past or apprehensions of the future that are often expressed?
· How does a climate infused with consumerist values affect our sense of what we are and our relationships with others in the “human family” (among people of different generations, genders, cultural and social backgrounds, “walks of life”, nations)?
· Has the idea of "a good life" changed with the advent of consumerism? What have we lost? What have we gained? Do you think our lives are flattened and trivialized, or newly enriched?
· Have advertising’s “truths” marginalized other forms of wisdom? Need traditional forms of knowledge be questioned and educational goals reviewed in its light?
· How has the idea of human needs changed?
· Is the moral life of the individual and society in jeopardy or is this an opportunity for embracing new and progressive definitions of morality?
“Human Values in the Age of Consumerism”
Write a short essay (between 1000 and 1200 words) that addresses the theme of ‘human values in the age of consumption’.
The essay can take its start from Stuart Ewen’s photograph of an old woman waiting for a bus under a glossy image in a cosmetic advertisement. The image expresses the tensions and ironies of our world where symbolic consumption has become part of everyday life.
We invite you to write about the impact of culture, permeated by commercial images and messages of desire, upon social and personal values, and on the importance of community and human interaction in society at large.
Very often, we all witness how things become valued expressions of identity, markers of social success or failure, fetishes substituting for human presence (“Show me what you have and I’ll tell you what you are”). Moreover, the aggressive expansion of consumerism has provoked the growth of anti-consumerist counter-culture, which insists on the need to be rather than to have. Even this response, however, might be taken to be a result of a consumer culture. In any case, the exploration of one’s relation to things in our time has become a way to explore the meaning of human life today.
Some of the questions you might address in your essay are suggested below (feel free to put forward your own for discussion!).
· How much of a home has this new environment become for us? Do you feel comfortable there?
· Do you share in the nostalgia for the past or apprehensions of the future that are often expressed?
· How does a climate infused with consumerist values affect our sense of what we are and our relationships with others in the “human family” (among people of different generations, genders, cultural and social backgrounds, “walks of life”, nations)?
· Has the idea of "a good life" changed with the advent of consumerism? What have we lost? What have we gained? Do you think our lives are flattened and trivialized, or newly enriched?
· Have advertising’s “truths” marginalized other forms of wisdom? Need traditional forms of knowledge be questioned and educational goals reviewed in its light?
· How has the idea of human needs changed?
· Is the moral life of the individual and society in jeopardy or is this an opportunity for embracing new and progressive definitions of morality?
posted by A. | 10:58 AM
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