Materialism has become part of human nature. It has been spread throughout history and evolved into an issue that will never cease to exist. However, this is no new discovery, materialism is not a new thing. It is displayed all over the media, in magazines, and in commercials. From the dawn of time, there has been an innate competition between human beings. Whether we admit to it or not, we all have the urge to be better than those around us. Consequently, it is not just technology that people compete with. Merchandise like clothes and houses and even home appliances are just a few more. It all comes down to the fact that people are too materialistic for their own good. As an American teenager, it is fairly easy for me to say that materialism and consumption play a large roll in my own cosmology. I frequently go shopping with friends and check out the latest fashion trends and I-Phones. In my defense, when you reside in a first world country with lavish shopping malls everywhere and billboards covered in
clothing models, food, and things to buy, these become the things that you aim for. Brian Swimme Stated in his writing How Do Our Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism, Before a child enters first grade science class, and before entering in any real way into our religious ceremonies, a child will have soaked in 30,000 advertisements. That child was me. I have been trained from a child to want the most popular object at the time because it was cool and would allow me fit in with other children my age. I later realized that this was not the way to live, because the bible says that idolatry is a sin. Faith is very prevalent in my life and author Paul Tillich speaks very highly of it in his piece What Faith Is. He states, Man, like every living being, is concerned about many things, above all about those which condition his very existence, such as food and shelter. While it is okay to own material objects such as a cell phone, it becomes an issue when people begin to buy everything that they see impulsively.