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Essay Competition "Human Values in the Age of Consumerism"

Write a short essay (between 1000 and 1200 words) that addresses the
theme of 'human values in the age of consumption.'
| |The essay can take its start from |
|[pic] |Stuart Ewen's photograph of an old |
| |woman waiting for a bus under a |
| |glossy image in a cosmetic |
| |advertisement. The image expresses |
| |the tensions and ironies of our world|
| |where symbolic consumption has become|
| |part of everyday life. |
| |We invite you to write about the |
| |impact of culture, permeated by |
| |commercial images and messages of |
| |desire, upon social and personal |
| |values, and on the importance of |
| |community and human interaction in |
| |society at large. |
| |Don't' we all witness how things |
| |become valued expressions of |
| |identity, markers of social success |
| |or failure, fetishes substituting for|
| |human presence ("Show me what you |
| |have and I'll tell you what you |
| |are")? The aggressive expansion of |
| |consumerism provokes, on the other |
| |hand, the growth of anti-consumerist |
| |counter-culture, insisting on the |
| |need to be rather than have. |
| |Exploring one's relation to things |
| |thus becomes a way to explore the |
| |meaning of human life today. |
| |Some of the questions you might |
| |address are suggested below (feel |
| |free to put forward your own for |
| |discussion!). |
| |How much of a home has this new |
| |environment become for us? Do you |
| |feel comfortable there? Do you share |
| |in the nostalgia |


for the past or apprehensions of the future that are often expressed? How
does a climate infused with consumerist values affect our sense of what we
are and our relationships with others in the "human family" (among people
of different generations, genders, cultural and social back-grounds, "walks
of life", nations)? Has the idea of "a good life" changed with the advent
of consumerism? What have we lost? What have we gained? Do you think our
lives are flattened and trivialized, or newly enriched? Have advertising's
"truths" marginalized other forms of wisdom? Need traditional forms of
knowledge be questioned and educational goals reviewed in its light? How
has the idea of human needs changed? Is the moral life of the individual
and society in jeopardy or is this an opportunity for embracing new and
progressive definitions of morality?