...Rampant “Rampant consumerism (seeking material goods without the ability to afford them) is one of the main causes for the current global economic crisis. Restraining consumerism remains a key task for developed countries like the US and Western Europe.” What are your views? [300-word limit] Humans are consumers by nature and have always exploited the available resources till extinction. However, the current global economic crisis owes its genesis to the economic decision makers who opened up the financial industry by deregulation and implemented concepts like derivatives. USA and Western Europe supported lavish lifestyles on international debt, instead of investing finances strategically towards production or revenue sources. The same reflected on the citizens who had negligible savings but excessive expenditure. The ‘central bankers of the world’ introduced systems which brought instability and empowered people to consume on credit. Behaving naturally, the enticed consumers took heavy loans and bought dream possessions, which they actually could not afford. And the controllers- investment banks, insurance companies and rating agencies, removed their accountability, playing private games on public losses leading to a global financial meltdown. Even now their consumption remains so high that if everyone starts consuming like Americans, sustainability would require 7 earths. Today, consumerism is a necessary evil – indispensable for a fast recovery of the market and economies...
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...Black Friday Madness In the essay “Black Friday: Consumerism Minus Civilization,” the author, Andrew Leonard, makes the argument that, “The out-of-control marketing and consumer insanity” (135) has taken over Thanksgiving and the days following it. Sadly, as consumers, we have forgotten what Thanksgiving is really all about. Marketing businesses have gone overboard brainwashing consumers with advertisements pumping them up to shop on Black Friday and the days that follow. Moreover, marketing businesses have caused the actions we see and hear about on Black Friday such as people being trampled, as consumers rush into stores to shop the sales, and are proof of this insanity. I strongly agree with Leonard’s arguments from “Black Friday: Consumerism Minus Civilization,” that it is time to take back Thanksgiving and end the craziness. First of all, Leonard points out that marketing and consumers have become out of control with all of the Black Friday sales. He gives examples of advertisements that are out of control. For example, “after the perky Stepford-wife shopper sings joyfully about how she’s ‘been in line since yesterday’ and how everybody’s going to Kohl’s at ‘midnight, midnight’ the ad ends with her observing, with a mild air of perturbance, that she ‘can’t get this darn song out of my head.’ Ladies and gentlemen, there’s your winner of the 2011 award for honesty in advertising” (135). This commercial is an attempt to brainwash consumers. He talks about “grown men screaming...
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...Marketing ethics is the area of applied ethics which deals with the moral principles behind the operation and regulation of marketing. Some areas of marketing ethics (ethics of advertising and promotion) overlap with media ethics. Contents 1 Fundamental issues in the ethics of marketing 1.1 Frameworks of analysis for marketing Possible frameworks 1.2 Power-based analysis 1.3 Is marketing inherently evil? 2 Specific issues in marketing ethics 2.1 Market research 2.2 Market audience 2.3 Pricing ethics 2.4 Ethics in advertising and promotion 2.4.1 Content 2.4.2 Delivery channels 2.4.3 Deceptive Advertising and Ethics 2.5 The use of ethics as a marketing tactic 2.6 Neuromarketing ethics 2.7 Marketing strategy 2.8 Further issues in marketing ethics 3 Regulation and enforcement 4 See also 5 References 6 Bibliography 7 External links Fundamental issues in the ethics of marketing[edit] Frameworks of analysis for marketing Possible frameworks[edit] Value-oriented framework, analyzing ethical problems on the basis of the values which they infringe (e.g. honesty, autonomy, privacy, transparency). An example of such an approach is the AMA Statement of Ethics.[1] Stakeholder-oriented framework, analyzing ethical problems on the basis of whom they affect (e.g. consumers, competitors, society as a whole). Process-oriented framework, analyzing ethical problems in terms of the categories used by marketing specialists (e.g. research, price, promotion, placement). None...
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...city can maintain its lively beauty. This is when the narrator unsentimentally reveals the existence of the child and describes in great detail the awful conditions in which it is forced to live in. These two atmospheric aspects seem to counterbalance each other, the light reflects the good and dark reflects the evil found in the city of Omelas. According to philosopher John Leslie Mackie, "evil is necessary as a counterpart to good" (203). There cannot be light without darkness, pleasure without pain, or good without bad. One cannot be without the other and both must be present for either to have meaning. No matter how brilliant the society or how advanced their technology is, the equation must contain evil. The child locked in the basement room is the city of Omelas necessary evil. This could be cause “in spite of God's all-powerful and all-good nature, evil exists" (Mackie 208). When the author states that “it is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science” (Le Guin 407), this shows just how unavoidable it is to have evil in society. Additionally, exploitation is the central theme in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” The citizens of Omelas that choose to bask in the continuous good fortune of their city are able to tolerate the exploitation of a single innocent child. They are able to live with the fact that this child is being...
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...Is Advertising Ethical? April 1, 2012 Joseph “Chip” Gibson MBA 515 Learning Unit 10 Dr. Gordon Russell Ethics in advertising to most sounds like the definition for irony. However, the practice of truthful advertising is commonplace in today’s society. Advertisers are held accountable for the messages they produce. So are the manufacturers, whom are held accountable for their products meeting the standards set forth by the advertisement. For the most part this is a self-regulated practice. Once an advertised product is called out for not living up to expectation, recovery of reputation and overall positive brand imaging are rarely had. The added fear of civil lawsuits pertaining to deceptive advertising coupled with penal laws which prohibit such dishonest acts, make for an industry centered on truthful intent. Advertising is any paid form of non-personal communication about an organization, good, service or idea by an identified sponsor (Berkowitz, Crane, Kerin, Hartley, & Rudelius, 2003, p.494). Advertisements are displayed through various means to a large audience. They can be found on the Internet, in a magazine, or even on the highway. Advertisements are everywhere! Their main goal is to grab the consumer’s attention about a specific good, service or institution. To achieve this goal, advertisers use an assortment of techniques. However, some of the techniques used are illegal, unethical, or both. To illustrate, there is an illegal trick known as bait...
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...film is filled with dark humor and hidden meanings. An underlying meaning in this film is that people are more dangerous than any monster. This is present in the scene where an overzealous SWAT team that kills a building of innocent minorities who are not affected by the virus. This not only reflects on the idea that people are more dangerous but also the distrust of the police and the racism that is still very present in society. This theme can also be seen in the situation with the bikers and the tension among the survivors themselves. Romero uses these instances to point out that when put in difficult situation people tend to take on the mentality of everyone for themselves. Another hidden meaning behind this film could be the evils of consumerism. Most of the film took place in a mall, and as more zombies showed up, it was inferred that they were going there because of habit. Romero could be trying to warn that, even in death, money and status still consume humans. This film is the second instalment of The Dead series, the first being Night of the living Dead. The series produced cult classics that are still very influential in today’s horror movie world. Romero pioneered the zombie film subgenre, creating the classic zombie we love today and building the foundation for future zombie movies like World War Z and 28 Days Later to be created. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead has been a beacon for pop culture and parodies, as well as resulting in four following films in the series and...
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...the whole world subjects itself to and that is money. The money has become the root of all evils. Disease, famine, political infighting human rights abuses are all products as a result of lack of money, control of money, and the hoarding of money. In this paper, the extent to which money has corrupt human beings is analyzed. The paper will look at the reasons as to why the evils due to money issue arise and how they are related to alienation as expressed by Karl Marx in his paper-alienated labor. Marx became revolutionary figure because he came to sure that capitalism could not be reformed. At the end, capitalism could only create estrangement and alienation. As Marx describes, there is important connections between greed, private property, the separation of labor, monopoly, exchange and competition, capital and landed property, value and devaluation of man and competition. There is connection between the entire systems of estrangement and that of the money system. Karl Marx perspective Karl points to the common connection between money and the evil. He demonstrates in the consumerism, greed, and profiteering characteristic of capitalism. “Money, and all it symbolizes, is the root of all evils in a deeper”. Money if viewed from outside the system may be seen to do something insidious. It eliminates the very concepts of evil. On the other hand, it makes it impossible to discriminate evil and good. Money is shorthand means to say that capitalistic relations, trade and exchange,...
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...Chapter One: * What is marketing? An activity, set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating , delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large * Marketing Process: First four steps marketing organisations uncover knowledge about consumers, create customer value and build strong customer relationships. Whereas the final step companies reap the rewards of creating superior customer value. * Core marketing concepts: * Needs, wants and demands: * Needs: States of felt deprivation. Humans have many complex needs. These include physical such as food, clothing. Social such as belonging and affection and individual as knowledge. Marketers try to help stimulate human’s needs. When a need isn’t satisfied a person will try either to reduce their desires or satisfy them with what is available. People in industrial societies might try to find or develop objects that will satisfy their needs. * Wants: The form taken by human needs as they are shaped by culture and individual personality. Want are descirbed in terms of objects that will satisfy needs. As society evolves the wants of its memebers expand. As people are expose to more objects that arouse their interest and desire, producers try to provide more want satisifying goods and services. Eg: A hungry person might want Mc Donald’s as their quick lunch. * Demands: Human wants that are backed by buying power. People almost have unlimited...
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...In these types of tragedies the characters’ misfortune is brought upon by himself, not by vice. This was a concept portrayed 500 years ago yet rings true today. People are not flawless and most misfortunes are brought on by some error in judgment. Examples of characters with this tragic flaw include Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Shakespeare’s King Lear. Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy Of King Lear’ must be taken in context. Before the renaissance period the only form of drama was the occasional religious mystery play. The plays of the renaissance period drew away from the religious theme. As a result there was a huge expansion in the range of subjects that the authors wrote about. Thus the tragedy of the character coming undone by flaw not by evil, was seen in the plays. King Lear’s basic flaw is his test of his daughters superficial love over real love. He values appearances over reality. In the play, King Lear does not ask “which of you doth love us most” but rather, “which of you shall we say doth love us most”? Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus can be compared to Shakespeare’s King Lear. Faustus represents the spirit of the renaissance, with its rejection of medieval, god-centered universe, and its embrace of human possibility. Faustus is the...
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...Thus, affects the law and order, economic production and human welfare. Drug abuse implies physical dependence upon a drug including the development of tolerance and withdrawal. An addict who develops tolerance requires more and more of the drug to transport him to the world of fantasies. If the addict is not allowed to take the drug he suffers from painful and uncontrollable convulsions, vomiting, depression and various other maladies. If one looks at the causes of the spread of this evil, the changes in the traditional pattern of society emerge as the major one. Rapid industrialization and urbanization have ushered in a new way of life with new values like individualism and permissiveness. This has resulted in loosening of informal means of social control, for example, influences of conventional sophistication but have low frustration tolerance. The stresses and strains of modern life with resulting frustration and depression give rise of escapist tendencies. Way to materialism and consumerism and the resulting alienation also has a bearing on the present day trend. Anonymity of our big cities is providing a favorable environment of drug addicts. Family has also shown changes in its structure and function recently. As a result parental control is less today because of the working situation of both parents. Break up of joint family also means...
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...or subjective. Does God exist? Is there a god? The existence of God is subject to lively debate in philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and popular culture. The Western tradition of philosophical discussion of the existence of God began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments that would now be categorized as cosmological. The field of theodicy arose from attempts to answer this question. Other arguments for the existence of God have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Aquinas, who presented their own versions of the cosmological argument (the kalam argument and the first way, respectively); Descartes, who said that the existence of a benevolent God was logically necessary for the evidence of the senses to be meaningful; and Immanuel Kant, who argued that the existence of God can be deduced from the existence of good. Thinkers who have provided arguments against the existence of God include David Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, and Bertrand Russell. In modern culture, the question of God's existence has been discussed by scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Francis Collins, Richard Dawkins, and John Lennox, as well as philosophers including Daniel Dennett,...
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...New Age Spirituality February 19, 2012 New Age Spirituality Is New Age Spirituality really new? Is it something old that has been creeping in and out as a worldview? The Bible says there is nothing new under the sun. “That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun” Ecclesiastes 1:9). This paper will show that New Age Spirituality is not so new, but is an ancient religion which holds to the belief that there are many gods and is essentially the revival of the substitute faith called occultism (Martin, 1989, pg. 14-15). We will see that this spirituality movement is merely a clever attempt made by depraved mankind in his ongoing quest to be his own God. I will examine the opinions of scholars and come to the conclusion that the New Age Religion is actually the Old Religion repackaged. This paper will show that the New Age Religion leads to an unfulfilled life in contrast to Christianity which leads to eternal life. The New Age Spiritualism worldview is a hodgepodge of beliefs that combines many beliefs together into a sweet, appetizing, appealing sounding religion. But drinking from this “fountain” is detrimental to the soul. A little bit of cyanide in the Kool-Aid will kill (Martin, 1989, pg. 52). Cult leader, Jim Jones, was heavily influenced by New Age spiritualism. As a result of this, 915 people died in Jonestown, Guyana at his indirect hands in a standoff between...
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...The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy The opening of this story begins with an organized student protest at Georgetown University, where author Pietra Rivoli, who is a professor of finance and international business, is watching the students arguing statements. This immediately captures my attention as it begins to describe a common characteristic of a major University that I live near and attend many events at. The University’s organized peaceful protest allowed the public speaking through protesting on the topic of the evils of big corporations and the explanation of how these big corporations, Globalization, The World Trade Organization (WTO) and the international Monetary Fund (IMF) are exploiting workers all around the world. One speaker alluding to “sweat shops” particularly caught the attention of the author by exclaiming, “Who made your T-Shirt”? This statement sparked Rivoli’s intrigue that is a great use of foreshadowing for what the story will lead to. The traveling of thousands of miles and across multiple continents to find out “who” really did make these shirts. We all wear our everyday cotton “tee’s” without giving a second thought about the journey each T-Shirt had to go through in order to make it here to the United States. This sets the foundation for the rest of the book and explains its purpose. The first stop in this journey isn’t on foreign soil where I expected the book to lead off, but rather here in the Continental United States at the Reinsch...
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...Consumer Behaviour Contents 1. Nature, Scope and Importance of consumer behaviour. 2. Consumer Research. 3. Consumer Learning 4. Consumer Perception 5. Consumer Involvement 6. Attitude, Culture, Lifestyle and Socialism 7. Consumer Motivation 8. Consumer Decision Making 9. Consumerism 1. Nature Scope and Importance of Consumer behaviour. : Consumer behaviour is defined as “The dynamic interaction of affect and cognition, behaviour and the environment b which human beings conduct the exchange aspects of lives”. IT means that the buying habits of the consumer are greatly affected by their thought process and their feelings experienced. Human beings are greatly influenced in their buying actions by various factors like opinion of others, marketing stimuli like product, advertising, packaging and product appearance. Importance of Consumer behaviour: • Ever increasing intensifying competition. • More aggressive competitors emerging with greater frequency. • Changes basis of competition. • Geographic sources of competition are becoming wider. • Niche attacks are becoming frequent. • Pace of innovation is rapid. • Price competition becoming more aggressive • Product differentiation is declining. As a principal, the marketing concept involves understanding the needs of the consumers and translating these needs into products or services to satisfy these needs. The basic objective in marketing is to achieve the goal of profit making through...
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...Inheriting a Tradition: “Following in the Footsteps of Christ” in the Spirit of the Early Anabaptists For Arnold Snyder MTS 626A By Mary Lou Klassen 12 December, 2005 Inheriting a Tradition: “Following in the Footsteps of Christ”[1] in the Spirit of the Early Anabaptists. Introduction Walter Klaassen in a recent article posed the following question of Mennonites, “Should we call ourselves Anabaptist?”[2] That question has been an underlying current as we have explored the sea of early Anabaptist Spirituality in our course. Klaassen answers the question in the negative. His concern is to point out that the early Anabaptists “stood consciously against and challenged virtually everything their Christian culture took for granted.”[3] Yet, they were intent on reforming that culture, not separating from it. Besides lamenting that Mennonites have compromised with the current culture, he feels that our sectarian tendency is also misrepresenting the tradition. I am not as much interested in his emphasis on Christian unity as I am in the points he raises to develop his negative answer. His main point is that the early Anabaptists took a counter-cultural stance. He outlines that this position showed itself in four respects: a) A “[rejection of] all religious coercion” and a refusal that governments should have any role within the church”[4]; b) A “[rejection of] the emerging capitalist economic system … because...
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