Answer one of the following questions in paragraph form:
1. How do you feel towards the program and why do you feel this way?
2. Does the program confront or confirm your personal beliefs? Explain.
3. Write about something important you learned from the program.
4. What stayed in your mind after the program was over? Why do you think that happened?
5. What made the program effective (or ineffective) in your opinion?
Here are the links to Affluenza and the Barry Schwartz videos.
Affluenza: Part One; Part Two; Part Three; Part Four; Part Five; Part Six
Barry Schwartz: The Real Crisis? We Stopped Being Wise
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4. What stayed in your mind after the program was over? Why do you think that happened?
I have the same feelings that it doesn’t mean we enjoy more when we own more; even we have almost everything, we feel empty inside. When I was little, there were few toys; the only entertainment in my home was to listen to the radio. But we had plenty of time to get together, and felt more banded. We spent more time on chores because we had no washing machines and microwaves; however we shared chores and didn’t have time to feel stress. Once the electricity was gone in the evening after the dinner, my parents, my brother and I sat together around the table. Candle lit up the room; we talked and sang some songs. It was so peaceful; even now I remember we smiled in the candlelight. Comparing to the past, we almost have everything we need now. New things come out every day, and advertisements always remind us that there are more wonderful things there, if you get what you want you will be perfect. All those things distract our attention from our family and friends. Lives become easier because of all kinds of electronic appliances and the improvement of technologies, but we didn’t spend more times to care about one another. We felt better when we got new things or had new experience, but when it reached a certain level, we tired of going after “material things,” we don’t feel satisfied with them anymore, and we realized that there were no as much change as we expected in our lives and started to feel depress. When we couldn’t fill out ourselves with “something,” we got lost. That’s we called affluenza.
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According to the Oxford Dictionary, Affluence simply means wealthy, and Influenza means a highly contagious infection of the respiratory passages, spread by a virus and causing fever, severe aching, and catarrh. Then we can easily understand the combination word Affluenza . But how many of us have really thought about why and how? After watching the video “Affluenza”, I realized how much of my life has involved in affluenza . Although I understand “money didn’t buy happiness”, but I just couldn’t stop placing high value on money as well as possessions and appearance(physical and social). I don’t remember since when the “better life” to me has meant money, house, fancy car and high social status; I don’t remember since when “the good life” to me has become “the goods’ life”; I don’t remember since when my needs have became advertisers’ wants; but when I look over my life, I do remember when my family moved from an old apartment to an “gated” high-rise, when I had my first laptop and when I had my third one since then. “Am I so materialistic?” I am astonished by asking myself. Affluenza is a contagious social disease, it affects our society rather than individuals. People are becoming less affectionate than they used to be; Our earth is getting polluted; our resource is limited. Unfortunately, there is no cure for this disease, but at least we can do something to slow down its epidemic by questioning how “better” is the “better” and by balancing our needs and wants.
What stayed in my mind most was the thought that simplicity was something I had once had, and have now lost in my life. The co-housing community portrayed near the end of Affluenza (where people shared child minding and meals) was much like the house I shared with four others in the early 1980s. For every technological advance, I have acquired a new toy: first a cell phone (a Nokia “brick”!); next high speed internet (and the need to be online all the time); and recently, high definition television and a PVR. I’ve also acquired the bills; I estimate our family’s communication costs at about three thousand dollars a year. The program made me think of a time when we had a single telephone, shared, with a sturdy rotary dial and our one innovation—a longer cord so we could retreat into another room for privacy. Our total communication bill shared by five adults: about 300 dollars a year (plus long distance). We cooked for each other; we ate together nearly every night. I can’t imagine any young person living that lifestyle now. We live our lives on the edge of each new innovation and each one de-simplifies our lives. Affluenza made me remember the simplicity I once had and made me want to live that way again.
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3. Write about something important you learned from the program.
After I watched the program two times, first, I learned this word “affluenza”. It is an “excess of prosperity” which makes people hunger for things that they don’t need, such as luxury cars, bigger and bigger houses (1100sq feet in 1950, 1400 sq in 1970, and 2000 sq feet in 1990), and lavish consumption. So, we see it is easy to combine affluenza with commercialism; however, commercialism sold through advertisements makes people become greedy, selfish, and self-absorbed. Two illustrations left their impression upon me. One of them is the consumption of cars. Luxury cars combined with stylish girls create popular car advertisements in the west, even in China. The program mentions the car show in Beijing. This century, world luxury car shows are held in the Beijing International Centre every year. More than a million people visit the exhibition. The most expensive Rolls-Royce and Benz automobiles are sold in Beijing. I am now suspicious of some people's true need as affluenza makes them get into crazy consumption. Another thing is the credit cards. In the USA, there are “billions” of credit cards used in various commercial markets, and from children to adults, people think that credit cards are the best way to purchase merchandise. In the program, a child, who is around five years old, is able to use his dad’s credit card to buy something on the phone. It is unbelievable. But, in fact, when we use the credit card to buy merchandise, we often forget the value of money and its meaning. So, credit card use causes crazy purchases and egregious waste. So, I learned from the program the danger of affluenza. It not only kills human life, but it destroys our earth. Affluenza promotes GDP increase but reduces the GPI, so it will promote natural resource waste, environmental pollution, and the prevalence of disease. Finally, the program tells me “affluenza - an unhappy condition of overload debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuits of more.”
By Qin (330 swords)
Commercials and Humanity
Towards the Affluenza program, I am always full of variable feelings. Nowadays, people became more and more materialistic. Millions of people spend millions of dollars on buying new things. They are feeling happy doing this, but for how long this happiness lasts? There will be a new commercial soon, then another, and another one after that, and so on. What about the relationship between human and the nature?
The nature gives us everything: water, fruits, vegetables, and greeneries- all the useful and healthy things, while technology separates us from the nature. So, it makes us closer to unhealthy life.
Making money to buy new things make people selfish. It makes people have a bad habit –comparing with each other. If my friend has a plasma TV I should have it too. In one way technology is making life easy, but in another way it makes it too busy and hard. I fell sorry for our too busy and too complicated life.
In addition to that, I do not feel that materialistic world is really making our lives easier. In the opposite, people are too busy making money, and sometimes the money has very high price. The terrorism, drug dealings, murders, and robbery are all result for that.
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The program "Live of Our Days" is an effective program which introduces us a major modern human disease--Affluenza. From this program, we learned that Affluenza represents a kind of "unhappy condition of overload, debt, axiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more," and people with this disease feel horrible empty inside themselves. The program also try to find out the causes and the solving methods of this problem. It mentions that we have more things than our grandparents' generation: big houses and cars, easy ways of shopping everything and travelling everywhere; We should be much happier than our grandparents. The fact is that we are not happier and healthier than them, instead we fall into an unhappy status called Affluenza, although few of us are aware of it. We can learn some American data and examples from the program: there were more shopping malls than high school in 1987, and more bankrumpted persons than college graduated in 1990, and 70% of devoices were caused by money problems. An example of a family's clip impresses me very much: the mother was watching Tv, the father was browsing internet and their kids were playing TV game enthusiastically; each of the family members was connected with something outside their home even although they were all inside home. We and our children are surrounded by commercial advertising of "better things" everyday, and are pushed by chasing wealthy dream to spin faster and faster for consuming, wasting and polluting our resources. How can we be happy? "Everything I own owns me"! we are becoming slavers of our own stuff step by step. Through watching this program, I realize that we should take actions to defeat and prevent the addiction of "getting more", and try some simple lives to avoid the affection of Affluenza.
I was shocked by the program after I watched. In my opinion, People’s appetency for the matters is not just the human being’s nature, but also it’s affected by the ads and the social society. Nowadays, the ads are so strongly effective our life because it’s around us everywhere. When we turn on the TV or read the news paper, over 50% messages are ads. The purpose of all the ads is that encourage people to buy something that mostly we want and not we need. Some media commend that the modern consumerism is borrowing tomorrow’s money to build today’s life. This method is overload to spend the money, and we have the chance because we all have the credit cards or could mortgage. And also, the person’s shopping appetency is affected not only by the ads, but it also affected by the social society. When we go to shopping mall, if some shops are very crowded or on sale, probably we will go to inside even if we don’t need anything. Especially, some people are very vanity. They bought new car, new clothes, or new house in order to compete with their neighbors or coworkers. Unfortunately, this Affluenza couldn’t cure by the medicine. Actually, there is no drug for this symptom. I think that people could avoid or get less influence by improving their cultivation.
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From the program, I know the psychological sickness named “affluenza”. I think the disease is a kind of side-effect to the human being from the development of economy and society. This program expounds those people’s inner suffering from the materialism of modern society. I can feel the depressed mood through the program. It makes me thinking deeply.
We indeed live in the materialistic times. New products constantly sprung up, and their ads enveloped us tightly----when we watch TV , the first sight is the advertising; when we listen to the radio, the first sound is advertising; when we read newspaper, we find the half of the papers are advertising. We are suffering from these ads overload. But we discover that we can not escape from them, and finally we become their captive consumers. I still remember how many kinds of TV set and computers I updated in three years. Do I really enjoy the happy feeling that the new technology bring to me? My answer is “Yes, indeed I do.” I still remember after we moved a well-decorated big apartment from a small apartment how satisfied we were, and the kind of satisfied feeling has lasted until now. I didn’t feel the inner empty anymore. I just awe the pace of technology and society developing so fast, so that it makes our life more convenient, more comfortable and easier. The only tiny pity is that I sometimes feel my time urgent so that it makes me a little stress. But I don’t exaggerate the stress like a psychology disease. I’d like to find-turn myself to cope with the stresses.
The development of the economy and the materialism of society may cause some side-effects. Can we go back to the past because of those effects? The answer is no. Facing to the stresses, we must learn how to release ourselves; facing to the pollution problem, we become the staunch advocate of the environment protection. Positive attitude can make people happy, and the happy mood can keep people far away from the affluenza.
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I have learned three very important lessons from Barry Schwartz’s short speech on “Practical Wisdom.” First, ethical people take responsibility for society’s problem Barry Schwartz gave the example of a woman walking in the park who saw a garbage can on the grown- she picked it up. By picking the can up she is not only correcting the irresponsible person’s mess, she is even preventing other consequences from happening. Secondly, I gained the knowledge that you are not born with wisdom; instead you must develop it over time. For example, when toddlers damage something very expansive we teach them what is right to do and how to stand up for the mistakes. By teaching them the right behaviour, we expect them to continue on with what we have preached them towards making a wise choice. I believe wisdom is making good decisions. Lastly, the most important lesson I have learned from Barry Schwartz’s speech is when he told us, “It is better to have two reasons for doing something, but have at least one.” I think the speech convinced me that to become a wise person, I have to practise wisdom a lot. I strongly agree on what Barry said in his speech that “developing your wisdom overtime takes a lot of practice and responsibility.” (215 words)
I truly appreciate programs like “Affluenza” and would like to give a standing ovation to those who endeavor this type of campaign. Through their careful studies, the researchers conveyed graphically about the catastrophic dieses of our days—it was a re-awakening moments for me. Like the narrator says, the epidemic has been with us quite a while, and no one seemed to know where to stop. Probably at first, before the virus rampant, people might have disrespected materialistic person on the other hand, a thrifty life style would have been a commendable virtue. However, as time went on, the society (we) gradually have sunken into materialism and lost the clarity of a good life; constantly desire more stuff though we are fully convinced that the goods won’t bring happiness. While watching Affluenza, I was laughing cynically at the few scenes (a man with four garages talks about shortage of spaces or people fly for just shopping), because I consider myself relatively frugal; compare to them at least. Nonetheless, I cannot deny that I’m not materialistic; indeed, I’m deeply infected with the consumerism and quite materialistic. But thankfully I am free from a virus called “Affluenza”, for I am contented with what I have and enjoy my life. I have had concerned (a little) about the epidemic and its consequences, and wondered, “Does anyone care about it?” I’m so relieved to learn that many people have changed their life style through cutting back their consumption and handling their money wisely. I’d like to join in their movement by living better with less spending and simpler life.
Something important that I learned from this documentary is now I know that Affluenza is a type of impulsive shopping habit that has affect many people. I was quite surprised to hear that how badly Affluenza has affected the American culture, lifestyle, economic and environment. In fact, it has affected the entire world. Now the time is different and we are in a high exposure society and materialistic world. Everywhere, we are attracted to thousands of advertisements by different means of media. They always take our attention and pass us the message to “buy more and more”. Therefore, people have changed a lot these days and have become more impulsive in shopping. For example, most women are spending more money in clothes and shoes, men get the latest technology items, and children’s expectation is getting higher to have all these expensive toys and games. Day by day, people buy more items; however they still feel empty inside and desire for more impulsive shopping. In the past, people had better and simple lifestyle. They used to spend more time in other activities and would go for shopping only if they needed any life necessity items. They were happier, healthier and satisfied with their lifestyle. As we know, some people in India, Africa and some other countries die from hunger whereas other people wish to have expensive cars and other expensive house hold items. People work over time for hours and buy more and more because they think it makes them happier. I think people are getting more materialistic and forget how to enjoy their life. I would say the only way to stay away from Affluenza is to avoid impulsive buying unnecessary items.
This program brought me a lot of memories about my infancy. It made me to realize that we grew up with the essential things that we needed to live (food, health services, clothing, shelter, and a lot of love). Nowadays, the new generations don’t understand how we grew up without all the new technology, and more than that “how could we be happy”? I can say we certainly were happy! Than, it happens that we were involved in all that “better life concept”. We began to work to have things. Every time a new product came in the store, we felt we needed. It is how capitalism works. But I think if we realize how like we are because we are alive, and can share the food with our families, and most important understand that we need so little to be happy; we will stop buying things that only full the house. Maybe we, adults, could understand it, but how we can make understand our kids with all the television commercials that they watch every time they sit in front a television? They not only want something, “they needed”. It is a fight that we need to win against the capitalism, but when?
There is no question that the program has confirmed my personal beliefs that ads have contributed to the molding of our social values. The addicted shopping shown at the Affluenza where people are hungry to buy more on credit cards is something that I have always questioned and find hard to comprehend. 40% of mails received are ads and 30% encourages us to buy on credit. Very sickening! When you go to a certain department store you are always asked to get their credit card for a discount of 10% even though, you will be bombarded with a higher percentage later. But that idea works because it makes you feel loved and accepted if you use the store credit card. Commercials may very well inculcate new ideas, encourage innovatory or trends. Because of a taste for sensational news, such media boost them from the start and exaggerate their importance. So we have to be aware of the importance of our social value. If we do not want our values to be molded by the media, we should follow the wise counsel found in the Bible. This is because it standards and principles remain valid for any society at any time in history. Moreover, they help us understand how important it is to be fashioned by Gods standards and not by popular ideas of modern world.
Does the program confront or confirm your personal belief?
The program ''Affluenza'' confirm my personel beliefs for many reasons.Nowadays,life becomes more developped and materialistic; people are strongly attracted by ads because it is around us every
where.The majority of pe0ple think that to have a ''better life'' it means to follow the technolgy and the improvment of lifestyle,so they are addicted on impulsive shopping items to what they mostly want,but not what they indeed need.The family is disconected by technology;eventhough all its members are physically at home,they are connected to the outside of their house by an electronic appliance.In the past,people enjoyed the simplicity of their life more than we do in our days.Their life was consisted of honesty,passion and care toward each other.Also,the relationship between the members of the family are more strongly than we are.In fact,I confront the materialism and the capitalism because they have never offered people pleasure;however,they transform people to materialistic roabot who lives hollowed from the inside and deprived them of the real bliss.
What stayed in your mind after the program was over? Why do you think that happened?
Sometimes, I believe that chasing more quality life is an instinct of human beings, even include the other creatures. We want live more comfortable; we want looked more beautiful and handsome; we want to move more quickly; we want a more health body; and we want one and another. Because of this motivation, we human beings made one and one progresses form past to now and surely to more advanced future. It is a good instinct-- it leads we people to go ahead and are differ from other creatures. But, does this kind of chasing same to consuming more? Some persons want to equal these two things, especially in the commercials liking those in the video. They insist to tell you again and again that chasing the more quality life means to consume their more advanced and efficient products. And only in this way, you can only get what you want and you are harmonious to the society around you in spiting of if you have the ability to do this. It is a lie—it totally confused the two conceptions. As a result it made our pitiful persons who believe the wrong viewpoint to go far and far away and catch the affluenza. I think the video gave us a good advice at it’s last to deal with it—for the other diseases we consume money to cure it and for this disease we save money to cure it.
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