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IN PRAISE OF Consumerism
Reason, August, 2000 by James B. Twitchell
Getting and spending have been the most passionate, and often the most imaginative, endeavors of modern life. We have done more than acknowledge that the good life starts with the material life, as the ancients did. We have made stuff the dominant prerequisite of organized society. Things "R" Us. Consumption has become production. While this is dreary and depressing to some, as doubtless it should be, it is liberating and democratic to many more.
James B. Twitchell teaches English and advertising at the University of Florida. His most recent book is Twenty Ads That Shook the World (Crown). This article is based on Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materalism, forthcoming in paperback from Columbia University Press.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Reason Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
