<p>Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.</p>
<p>Materialism: it's the thing that everybody loves to hate. Few aspects of modern life have been more criticized than materialism. But let's face it: materialism—acquiring possessions and spending money—is a vital source of meaning and happiness in our time. People may criticize modern society for being too materialistic, but the fact remains that most of us spend most of our energy producing and consuming more and more stuff.</p>
<p>Adapted from James Twitchell, "Two Cheers for Materialism"</p>
<p>Assignment:
Should modern society be criticized for being materialistic? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.</p>
<p>The quintessential error James Twitchell makes when addressing the importance of materialism is: the same way “Modern Society” is not limited to the boundaries of our culture, “Materialism” is not limited to our superfluous habits of buying excessive amounts of material. There is no universal standard that defines materialism; it scopes can range from the exploitation of third world countries and ruination of the environment, to the superficiality of our media objectifying woman and trivializing misogyny.</p>
<p>A paramount example of why we must continue to address the notoriety of materialism lies overseas. Corporations like Nike embody why materialism is hugely detrimental to our planet. It may seem generous of Phil Knight to generate jobs for workers in struggling third world countries. However, the underlying and so very obvious reason these companies continue to exploit poor countries is because they do not have minimum wages or regulations when it comes to the working conditions. The highest profit can be attained if the workers are offered the meekest wages and given the cheapest environments to work in. This has historical parallels with our past, when woman working in mills were given similar wages and abysmal conditions. And over a century later, even with a surplus of wealth, they refuse to raise the conditions and wages so they can earn excessive amounts of money. This is the reprehensible virtue of material over substance, money over human lives.</p>
<p>Another quintessence of why Materialism should be criticized is our modern media objectifying woman. The ridiculousness of shows like Toddlers and Tiaras almost resemble satire, however, they are in fact advocating young girls to try and resemble Barbie dolls and adult models; and once again the results of this are extremely negative. This objectification leads to many unnatural diseases like bulimia and anorexia. Today out of 50 girls, 1 is bulimic. Correlations are proven to be directly related to the media.</p>
<p>Saying materialism is unnecessarily the victim of criticism is a very unhealthy notion. We should in fact be criticizing it more and more every day. Hopefully people like James Twitchell can realize that materialism must continue to be the center of criticism or it could very well be the bane of our posterity.</p>
<p>Notes: I showed it to an adult and they said they thought it was a bit too biased against James Twitchell since the Prompt only gave me a small description. Can you guys give me your opinions on what score it should have hypothetically gotten?</p>