The beginning of this article brings on a sad realization and puts a very artificial spin on the population of our world. The obsession with material items has significantly increased over the years and as Richard Lanham suggests in The Economics of Attention, has become out of control. We are rapidly destroying the beauty in our world and replacing it with artificiality. People love stuff just too much but there is something beneficial to our increased need for stuff.
“There have never been so many art galleries, so many symphony orches- tras, so sophisticated a life for the senses and the sensitive. And never have the actual physical locations of the world been so venerated or visited.”
Our need for stuff has enriched our sense of beauty as well. People are taking advantage of the beauty of nature by taking trips into the unknown and discovering what the world has to offer. Tourism has significantly grown in the past few years. Vacation destinations are popping up all over the world in unexpected yet amazing places.The world is being experienced and appreciated in ways that it never has been before.
We all love vacations and beautiful locations and the advancement of tourism is great but that doesn’t excuse our excessive need for stuff. The advancement in technology is a major contributor to the increased need for stuff. It is hard for us to turn down the stuff when it has now become so easily accessible to us. Everything is too easy now.
“Actual physical location threatens to evaporate everywhere we look. In- formation, we are everywhere taught, has annihilated distance. Surgeons can cut you open from a thousand miles away. Facsimile Las Vegas casinos deliver Rome and New York on the same daily walk. You don’t have to go to the office to go to the office. You can shop in your kitchen and go to school in your liv- ing room.And, sadly enough, when you actually do go out shopping, one mall seems much like another.”
Why do we want all this stuff? Multiple reasons. Its fun, it makes us feel good and look good, its efficient and helpful, the list goes on and on but do we actually need all this stuff? No. Back in the day people lived happily without many of the things that we have now. A certain television comes to mind. There is a girl that can’t be much older than 12 saying to her younger sister how she is so lucky because she has it easy these days because she can watch movies on her tv wherever she wants and she had to watch her movies in the living room. The explanation is bad but the idea of the commercial is mocking our crazy advancements in technology and our need for new and innovative stuff. Our intake of stuff could be and should be cut down and the simpler things in life need to make a comeback.