Awakening Your Inner Materialist

The Huffington Post:

I don’t see myself as especially materialistic, and you probably don’t see yourself that way either. The fact is, I don’t know anyone who actually takes pride in acquiring more and more stuff, and many of my friends decry the commercialization of the holiday season. That’s a good thing, because all the evidence says that people who are preoccupied with possessions are not very happy people. Consumerism is linked to anxiety, lousy relationships and poor mental and physical health.

But let’s not get too self-righteous quite yet. We may not derive our core sense of self-worth from what we buy and own, but does that mean we’re immune to all the cues in our consumer culture? Unless you live in a cave, you have been relentlessly bombarded since before Thanksgiving with images of goods that are novel, luxurious or necessary for personal fulfillment. Is it possible that these ubiquitous messages might awaken the inner consumer in all of us, leading to all those unsavory social consequences?

Read the whole story: The Huffington Post