Consumerism and One Dimensional Thought

“One Dimensional Man” by Herbert Marcuse is a fascinating book about the consumption of people into consumerism, media, and the culture industry. Marcuse was a brilliant sociologist who coined many new terms and theories that modern sociologists still use today. His book touches many aspects and broad schemes that can be seen in society. He tends to focus on this main idea that people are becoming consumed by television, media, the need to so shopping, and the ultimate pursuit of the American Dream. 

Instinctually humans are driven by similar things; food, water, and shelter. In todays modern driven era these basic human needs are slowly being replaced with items we do not really need. Instead they are being replaced with things we strongly believe that we need, or we would not be able to last without them. For example many people including myself are glued to our smart phones all day long. Whether we are checking social media, listening to music, or texting our friends. Our phones are always in our hands or not too far out of sight. Another example would be peoples spending habits and shopping.Shopping has become this cultural things that people do for any number of reasons. Some shop because of want and need, while others shop for addiction and status verification. 

Marcuse looked at the social world and saw people becoming consumed by products and material items. He witnessed people becoming entranced by products and their ability to completely grab someones attention and change their way of thinking. These products have the ability to alter peoples motives, and desires and targets that infatuation and drive directly at their product. I came across an article about extreme shopping habits on NBC.com titled; “Taking Shopping Habits to the Extreme” by Allison Linn. In her piece she has some views that align with Marcuse. She says that we as Americans have outsourced a lot of goods and services to other countries to up production and keep costs down. This was working for many years until recently we started seeing many toy recalls back to China, and all the environmental problems associated with mass production. 

These problems were enough for some people to stop in their tracks and pull themselves out of one dimensional thought, as mentioned by Marcuse. This incidents opened peoples eyes to the fact that mass consumption and industrialization is taking on a massive form in American society and its a problem that can get very out of hand if not dealt with. Some people are now making small changes in their lives to try and cut down on their role in adding to mass consumption. Now people will shop at local farmers markets instead of huge stores, and make people consider their spending choices more carefully.