Consumption

The word consumption can be broken down into many different ways. It was an interesting notion that Keywords talked about the meaning turning from a negative one into a positive one. I for one believe in the contrary. I will argue this based on two points; the general contemporary meaning of the word consumption and the mass populations blurring of the lines between want and need. Consumption, as an act is what it is, and that is consuming and taking something away, removing something from existence to be blunt; depletion. Look at food. We consume food; we eat it. Natural resources. We consume oil; we burn it. In modern society (todays cities and cultures) are preoccupied with acquiring more, more, more. Whether it is money, power, or whatever we seem to want more. This brings me to the second point in my argument. The concepts of wants and needs seems to be misconstrued and misinterpreted within modern society. A want is just that, something you want. For example a television, a stereo, Angelina Jolie, etc. A need is, well, just that, a necessity. Things like food, water, sleep are essential and without them we wouldn't be able to live much less function properly. The big issue is that people feel sometime they need something they want. For those that argue that people "want what they need" are just using fallacious reasoning. If your want is a need then it is need not a want! We have become so accustomed to consuming not only what the media is feeding us, but anything we think might be fun, exciting, yummy! Not only is America looked at overseas as greedy and power hungry for going into Iraq, but we are also the most obese country on the planet. Those cant be just coincidences. To be fair however this mentality doesn't only exist in America, it is perverting the global state of mind as well. But I am not a completely pessimistic person. Look at it this way with globalism and McDonaldization of the world maybe the wants and needs of poor countries with the people just trying to survive, maybe, just maybe, they too will confuse what they want and need and who knows one day Somalia will be the most obese country in the world.