I thought this week's lectures and discussion were very interesting and I really learned a lot. It was interesting to see where our nations obsession with buying stuff came from. Our society clearly is still concerned and obsessed with having the biggest and best things just to simply have them and show them off. It seems as if this all started in the 50's and later on with the onset of the cold war. Also, I didn't even know that the cold war was a "war" over which country had the best products. Still to this day we seem to have this competition with other countries over having the best cars and technology.
I also thought the video about Detroit was really interesting. I knew that whites fled out of Detroit and settled in metro Detroits suburbs, but I didn't know they were actually encouraged by the government and helped out by being able to purchase homes there, while African Americans were deterred from leaving the city. Growing up in metro Detroit I have seen where these different races have settled and how they have traveled from city to city following others. It is interesting to see how this all started and why and when people started moving out of Detroit.
Lastly, I travel down I-75 all the time and I had no idea the background behind the highway. I'm glad I know the story behind it now and what the city and surrounding areas had to go through when it was being built.
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I agree with Kate. I had thought of the cold war as a battle for who would be the greatest world power and who could land on the moon first. I learned from the lecture that it was a rivalry between two nations who competed with material products. Citizens were told in order to help their nation in the cold war they had to buy certain products and portray their family in a certain manner. The cold war created a new way of life for americans. The lectures taught me a lot of new details about the effects of consumer nation.
ReplyDeleteI also think that American consumerism has been one of the more intriguing topics we've covered in lecture. All of us have grown up in an era where we still feel the affects (and possibly still encourage the growth) of mass consumption. It is an ongoing cycle; it's stressful and it's destructive. And never-the-less, it's still here.
ReplyDeleteI look at consumerism with conflicting ideas, at times. It is very easy to criticize, but sometimes I see the benefits of our nation's obsession with material possessions. Although mass consumption and mass production have led to many serious downturns in our economy, it has arguably also created a lot of stability that we as citizens sometimes forget about. It is America's consumption that has led to a lot of the economic growth of many decades in history. I think if we want to propose anti-over-consumption in the United States, we will need to ensure economic stability and growth in other ways. Perhaps our nation would need to shift from good-oriented to service-oriented. A move from selling materials to selling services could optimally offer a greater range of services to the poverty-stricken and raise the standards of living for middle and lower classes. Far too ambitious, but it's a thought.
It was surprising to me too, the reality of the emergence of seemingly segregated neighborhoods. I always thought it was just a preference thing, merely that people wanted to live around those who are most similar to them, but I now know that there is definitely a deeper underlying reason for this. Like you, I am also glad to know the reality behind certain aspects which make up the infrastructure of the U.S.
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