Is American Society Way Too Materialistic?

There is a silent killer in all of our homes, right now.

As you sit reading this paper, it sits waiting for you. It is not a homicidal attacker, a new strain of bird flu or toxic radon gas leaking from the soil. It is something much more simple, preventable and mundane: comparison.

In America, we tend to constantly compare ourselves to our peers. While it is this drive to overtake each other that has led to America's awesome success, it is also a major factor in many of our social failures. It may not be a coincidence that we have the highest rates of heart disease, obesity and high blood pressure in the world, and also the least vacation time, greatest disparity in wages between executives and workers, and no universal health care plan.

As someone who has been fortunate enough to visit 44 different countries and live and attend school in Costa Rica for eight months, I have seen many nations with vastly different social concepts than those of the United States.

While living in Costa Rica, I saw that the people there seemed to be much happier and kinder toward one another than the people here. They did not focus so much on whether or not they had outperformed their neighbor as they did on whether or not they were satisfied. When I attended school there, the other pupils were amazed by the fact that I felt driven to be in the top 10 percent of the class. While I was working hard to earn a higher grade than the others, they were working for their own benefit.

Even though the result of this philosophy is that these students were not producing the same level of work as students in a more competitive environment, I think that they are better and more well-rounded people for it. They were happier overall because they enjoyed life not for the material gain or the promise of it, but for the joys found in whatever they were doing. Instead of putting themselves through suffering and hardship to reap financial rewards, many chose to accept less financially in order to gain more leisure time.

While this sort of choice is seen in our society as giving up or copping out, in their it is viewed as finding success. This is a crucial part of how the social concepts of many countries and the United States differ. Our society is almost completely geared to produce. We take very little vacation time and everything is done in order to maximize efficiency.

We have modeled our society from pure, naked capitalism, and while it is great for the Gross National Product, it is overly stressful and hard on the people who fuel it.

We seem to lose sight of the fact that we can have all the money in the world but without the time to enjoy the success we have created, it will not bring any real benefit. Many other societies have found a healthier balance that allows people time to enjoy life and the things they have earned, instead of focusing on how to maximize their production and garner more money.

We are continually living our lives on the pretense that we are working to get enough money to beat some standard, but the truth is, there will always be someone or something with more. If we continue to view the world this way, we will never be satisfied. We would be better off in the long run to sacrifice some final material product so that we can enjoy the experience of life.