The belief that having a lot of material possessions and money is the only thing that matters in life is known as materialism. It conveys the idea that people will be happy in the entire universe if they have more and more money. This idea has had a negative effect on social and personal values in the contemporary world because everyone is now driven by increased profit in order to amass more and live a happy life. People's moral principles have been corrupted by evil practices that have entered people's lifestyles, and they have begun bribing officials with access to public assets, money laundering, human and drug trafficking, and political assassinations.
Main points to support thesis
Materialism culture is greatly affecting social and personal ethics.
Materialism has greatly corrupted social and personal ethics and responsibility.
Materialism has been used to promote mischievous economic senselessness in the society.
Materialism fundamentals have caused an advance in abstract of pure spiritual reason.
Materialism has caused massive negative to social behavior
Materialism has caused many services and manufacturing industries to concentrate in only large towns and cities this has caused massive rural to urban migration.
Materialism is the cause of unhappiness, causing depression in people due to lack of contentment and fulfillment of one’s possession.
Thesis Sentence: Materialism has greatly brainwashed people’s normal way of thinking and doing things which greatly matters to them and damaging their moral fabric leading to negative change in personal ethics.
II. Body
1. Topic Sentence: Damage of materialism among the youth
Support: People have changed their spiritual beliefs and moral values from the socially established system and mostly due to influences from celebrities, politicians, religious leaders, and capitalism entrepreneurs.
Support: Bell Hooks states that corporations manipulate social demand through mass marketing technique to their business interest.
Support: The strategy is to use radio, the internet, television as the media to focus and reach to the broad audience
d) Summing up sentence: Impression has furthermore made the young generation identify themselves with what they possess like cars, clothes, phones and instead of making personal values and character to be their driving force towards living happy life.
2. Topic Sentence: People have started to create another world across the whole globe, which is simulated by greed and possession of more wealth.
Support: They are advocating for imperialism, capitalism, authoritarianism and racism; they do not care about human rights, democracy, and environmentalism
Support: people have joined secret religions like cults and Illuminati in order to have more fame and money. Others have acted pornographic and other films which do not observe social ethics in the name of earning more wealth and power.
Support: led the current generation into a wrong conclusion that large houses, more comfort, and living celebrity like life is the best model of living
d) Summing up sentence: This philosophy of materialism has caused the individual to grab and hold basic human needs and make them pay their bills in expensive items without caring about other people life. This material greed have caused a lot of pain and suffering to low income earns because they are used to sustain the living standard of rich arrogant bosses
3. Topic Sentence: The notion of materialism has destroyed the philosophy of intellectual and spiritual living.
a) Support: Banking and mortgage defaults have less proper care and invariant to the solution of human problems.
b) Support: It has replaced spiritual, immaterial virtues with the universal material mind; this has perpetrated evil and dangerous human values
c) Support: Materialism have become like a kind of secular religious choice which has affects the social management of physical resources, due to massive grabbing by greed people making them inaccessible to majority of the people.
d) Summing up sentence: Terrorist organizations are greatly determined to push for materialism rather than superficial spiritual. This has resulted in a massive expansion of the war in the region, destroying the life of innocent people.
4. Topic Sentence: Effects of materialism on Social spiritual ethics
a) Support: materialism promotes idolatry of material wealth or possession. This characterizes the human quality of life, and in a godless society, this philosophy of materialism is plausible to social ethics.
b) Support: These materialism concepts have made the world very volatile, and humanity is put on the mercies of those who have. Hence majority are left to suffer in the hands of the minority who control the resources.
c) Support: Materialism should be looked as the antichrist or atheistic in nature. It does not regard to any religious foundations in the societies and has rampantly operated throughout the world.
d) Summing up sentence: Materialism promotes negating of common faith, human will, feelings, and thought. In normal cases, this damages personal ethics when they are controlled without someone consent.
5. Topic Sentence Materialism has caused massive negativity to social behavior. It has bad public influence, and people will do anything to earn money.
a) Support: The politicians has forged document to raise in their political career and to earn tenders and more wealth from public resources which is against social and personal code of conduct.
b) Support: Due to a more senior lifestyle in the cities, social ethics are abandoned, and personal values are not conserved. Insecurity, crime, prostitution and drug abuse increase, causing massive damage to humanity
c) Support: In Constantinople, Christian artists focused on what was done by the Romans and developed their structures from the same principles of artwork.
d) Summing up sentence: The emergence of slums, the increase in the high rate of poverty, more air pollution and lower quality of living increases because the resources are controlled by the few people who do not want to utilize the resources they are holding for benefit of improving people's standard of living
Conclusion
Social and personal ethics should be an integral part of human beings. Even though materialism has motivated some to work hard in order to afford living higher standard of life, real wealth should also be looked in form of nonfinancial assets and promotion of liberal ideas like advocating human right and democracy. People in the society should not allow materialism to dictate their ways of life, which usually erode their social and personal ethics.
Effects of Materialism on Social and Personal Ethics
Introduction
Materialism is the main human catalyst which affects human personality. It is associated with an opinion that if an individual possession gets more and more money then, they will get all the world happiness. It has brought a conviction that wealth is the most important thing in life. Most of these behaviors have been brought to young generation by the media which has continued advertising and reinforcing the way celebrities are living in the massive home and expensive cars making society to believe that material wealth is the only path to happiness. In the modern world, this perception negatively impacts social and personal value, everyone is now motivated by more profit in order to accumulate more and live a happy life. People moral ethics have been corruption and evil ways have been introduced to people ways of life and they have started engaging in grabbing of public properties, money laundering, human and drug trafficking, and political assassinations (Liu 110). This brings the question, is materialism the main contributor of corrupting people moral ethics?
Materialism perception has a strong place in the current economy, for instance during the US economic crisis the wall street led to house bubbling due to the greed of more wealth, and the belief of materialism. This cause massive loss to low-income earn to the last penny of what they had. Negative impacts to social and personal ethics have grown more to the current generation, and they now believe that a person is what he/she possesses. This moral decay problem has deepened to a large magnitude due to lack of emphasis on spiritual beliefs and moral values in the socially established system which are caused by politicians, celebrities, religious leaders, and capitalism entrepreneurs (Tofts 162). Around the world, there is an enormous movement which believes in global capitalism; it has a huge role in advocating humanism, state authoritarianism, and pumping materialism. This material drive has caused them to oppose democracy, ethical principles, and human rights. Materialism has greatly brainwashed people’s normal way of thinking and doing things which matter to them most and damages their moral fabric leading to a negative change in personal ethics.
Effect of Materialism among the Youth
An essay on materialism among the youth by Bell Hooks points out that the world is the marketplace where the young people are influenced by mass media advertisers about material wealth as a determiner of personal worth. The author state that corporate manipulates social demand through mass marketing technique to their business interest (LeCarner 163). The youth are the important potential customer and are the highly prominent target. Their strategy is to use radio, the internet, and television as the media to focus and reach to the broad audience. In the advertisements, they demonstrate that having a lot of money, then one cannot face any hardship, any social problem, and a person can commit any crime because he/she have money power to manipulates the sovereign authority and prevent people from facing justice (LeCarner 168).
This distorted presentation of world reality has shown that money is the answer to seizing true happiness. This impression has furthermore made the young generation to identify themselves with what they possess like cars, clothes, phones and much more and instead of putting character and personality values as their driving for towards greatness (LeCarner 165). This brings the questions that, has it really led to damage in social ethics, effects to the psychological concept of materialism being inevitable and causes the personal values among the youth to be worthless?
The establishments such as government, families, and schools have neglected their responsibility of teaching the child the importance of good personal ethics and values. The education curriculum encourages the capitalist form of economy where the individual can accumulate as much as he or she want which leads to the human right violation and lacking caring and supporting the less fortunate in the society. They encourage the materialism for them to live a happy life, thus implicating that money as the most important factor in life. This love of money has affected human character making the observation of social values and codes as primitive. This social values, thoughts, and behavior have changed the character development negatively making materialism culture to dominate and making a huge challenge for the humanitarian values to be observed (LeCarner 168).
People have started to create another world across the whole globe, which is defined by oppression and advocate of capitalism which does not respect the personal dignity. They are advocating for imperialism, capitalism, authoritarianism and racism; they do not care about human right, democracy, and environmentalism. However, their mind is dominated with how they can amass more wealth and live a higher standard of life. This has created a generation of money oriented people and individualism who notion of materialism is the driving force, making the prominent hope for better society to diminish. Many individuals and mostly musician and prominent individuals in both politics and business have to join secret religions like cults and Illuminati in order to have more fame and money (LeCarner 164). Others have acted pornographic and other films which do not observe social ethics in the name of earning more wealth and power. This notion of materialism has caused countries to attack others, and many criminal groups are emerging to control extensive natural resources like oil and gold fields.
Effects of Materialism on Social Welfare
Materialism culture is pre-emptive to social and personal ethics. It has led the current generation into a wrong conclusion that large houses, more comfort, and conspicuous consumption of wealth all the best traits. Due to finite resources of the world, it has led to the destruction of the health of the environment. This philosophical of materialism have caused the individual to grab and hold basic human needs and make them pay their bills inexpensive items without caring about other people life (Olson 126). This material greed has caused a lot of pain and suffering to low income earns because they are used to sustain the living standard of rich arrogant bosses. People’s moral values have decayed due to material greed, and they have offer people as burnt offering (LeCarner 170). This is through using them to practice prostitution and sell them drugs which kill them eventually in the name of gaining wealth. Other are arming organizing groups with sophisticated weapons for them to steal from them.
Materialism has conscientiousness corrupted of social and personal ethics and responsibility. The philosophy of intellectual and spiritual has been diminished and eliminated by the notion of materialism. Banking and mortgage defaults have less proper care and invariant to the solution of human problems. It has allowed thoughtfulness and individualism to consume the vast social collectivism. It has doomed the intelligence culture and replaces it with unnecessary rationally mind of limited sphere and excess striving to human dominance on social ethics (Olson 128).
It has replaced spiritual, immaterial virtues with the universal material mind; this has perpetrated evil and dangerous human values. This has described the maggoty of value preference and paradoxically to religious liberty. Materialism has caused a thermodynamic loop of human sin and sympathy to material facts of life. Materialism is untendered kind of secular religious choice which affects the social management of physical resources.it has destroyed biosphere health due to a lot of air pollution.it have made it harder to restore and conserve the bio-diversity of macroeconomics to produce enough material sufficient quality resources. This has provided an adequate challenge of social and personal ethics maintained and finite spiritual component (Toft 151).
Materialism has been used to promote insolent economic idiocy. This social vice has led to political exploit of crass racial, mass, and social and economic morals. Theory of transformation of desirable material quantities has been used to use ownership by own groups and other individual seeking the appropriation. In Syria, Iraqi and Afghanistan quest for material and power and control of resources have damage social ethics. Terrorist organizations have rationale strive to push for materialism rather than superficial spiritual. This has resulted in a massive expansion of the war in the region killing innocent people. This hunger for material control has damaged social ethics where these groups kidnap women and children. They rape then and use some as a human shield in case of any attack. This violation of human rights and social justice has eroded personal ethics in the community, and people do care about the consequences of their action (Tofts 158).
Effects of Materialism on Social Spiritual Ethics
Materialism fundamentals have caused an advance in abstract of pure spiritual reason. And now is hard to kill social and political lies due to the high rate of brainwashed individual.it is hard to detach from material embedded status, secular, and trans-ontological capability of observing religious rights. It has caused utopian dreams and pure political idealism which is against personal ethics. It exploits standards and neutralizes the cultural beliefs capability render them mean less and thus making sociality have hindrances in differentiating between good and bad ethical conduct in the community. These materialism concepts have made the world very volatile, and humanity is put on the mercies of those who have. Hence majority are left to suffer in the hands of the minority who control the resources (Liu 98).
Materialism promotes negating of common faith, human will, feelings, and thought. In the austere sense, this damages personal ethics when they are controlled without someone consent. From another angle, materialism promotes idolatry of material wealth or possession. This characterizes the human quality of life, and in a godless society, this philosophy of materialism is plausible to social ethics. Materialism goals are acquisition of wealth goods, equivalent or accumulation of success; which leads to thievery, jealousy, no moral and no sense of wrong or right; avoiding all spiritual deity and faith which cause despair, hopelessness and unrepentant of sins; and lastly the self-interest which create greed, selfishness and no compassion for humanity. In a society with ethnic and who have a spiritual belief in Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Judaism they there to social code of ethics and materialism does not stand for their community (Liu 108).
Materialism should be looked as antichrist or atheistic in nature. It does not regard to any religious foundations in the societies and has rampantly operated throughout the world. The people have increasingly become humanistic and secular in nature. This has eroded the social ethics which govern the community. Humanity has denied any association with God and has glorified himself and instilled fear to the society for them to worship him. Spirituality and materialism are an entirely complete opposite of the human spectrum. It has led to brainwash of moral responsibility and making a strict rule of communism for people to disband their spiritual worship (Liu 112). A country like China has prohibited the teaching of spiritual knowledge to children and encouraged materialism.
Materialism has caused massive negative impacts on social behavior. It has bad public influence, and people can do anything to earn money. This has led to people to do morally wrong actions like robbery with violent, professional assassin among many. The young generation does not want to gain education all that they want is fame and money. As a result, it has affected social ethic negatively because materialism has changed their way of thinking. Public manners have being eroded, and now people can smoke and take drugs in public with fear. Materialism has shown them to succeed one must be a thug or a corrupt people. The politician has forgery document to raise in the political career and to earn tenders which are against social and personal ethics (Olson 125).
Materialism has caused many services and manufacturing industries to concentrate in only large towns and cities this has caused massive rural to urban migration. This movement mainly occurs to the young generation. Due to huge population in the towns and lack of enough jobs to sustain them, it led to higher rate of unemployment. Also, as a result of having a higher lifestyle in the cities, social ethics are abandoned, and personal values are not conserved, causing Insecurity and crime, prostitution and drug abuse increase, causing massive damage to humanity. The emergence of slums, high rate of poverty increase, air pollution and lower quality of living increases because the resources are controlled by few people who do not want to utilize them to develop the country and improving people's standard of living (Liu 115).
Materialism is the cause of unhappiness, cause depression to people due to lack of contentment and fluffiness of what they possess. It has cause people to live a life beyond their means. For instance, one might find people who can't afford good quality health insurance, can barely afford daily food and house rent having big cars and living expensive apartment with big-screen TV and many children's toy. This makes this family work long hours and in poor working conditions to meet this needs. In the long run, they end up been consumed by many debts causing them unhappy in their life. Bullying and Cyber-bullying have real increased due to increasing in materialism in the society and mostly among children (Olson 121). This bullying is mainly due to damages in the social ethics caused by the materialism which makes those with a lot of wealth to feel superior and can have inferior low-income earns. Workers are sexually harassed in the place of work by their boss who ignores human rights and code of social ethics. Boss feels he owns them and they cannot control their life the way they want.
Counter Argument
Though materialism is greatly associated with a number of negative effects, I believe it has its own positive impacts. The counter argument here will be based on happiness. So far, it has already been demonstrated that the idea of purchasing of the materialistic goods, tends to lower happiness instead of increasing it. This brings the question that, if materialistic does not contribute to happiness, then what can bring people happiness? Personally, I believe that having a lot of money can bring us happiness. As a result of having a lot of money, one can be able to engage in different activities that will see him/her happy. For instance, an individual stands the capability of interacting with different people in various parts of the world which make a person be happy.
Conclusion
Social and personal ethics should be an integral part of human beings. People are greatly required to celebrate and appreciate simple things like the naturalness, tranquility, and simplicity of their values which hold them together. Even though materialism has motivated some people to work hard in order to afford to live higher standard of life, real wealth should also be looked in form of non-financial assets and promotion of liberal ideas like advocating human right and democracy. People in the society should not allow materialism to influence their ways of life, which erode their social and personal ethics.
Bibliography
Harvey, David. Seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. Oxford University Press (UK), (2014):100-120.
LeCarner, Thomas M. Dollars and sense: Economies of forgiveness in antebellum American law, literature, and culture. Diss. University of Colorado at Boulder, (2014): 150-170.
Liu, Ran. "Conflict between City Image Pursuits and Migrant Workers' Rights." Spatial Mobility of Migrant Workers in Beijing, China. Springer International Publishing, (2015):91-122.
Olson, Kirsten. Wounded by school: Recapturing the joy in learning and standing up to old school culture. Teachers College Press, (2015): 120-130.
Tofts, Michelle S., and A. Collins. Discourses of Love and Money: Exploring Constructions of Gender and Romantic Relationships. (2013):140-180.
