Materialism
Mariana Sun
The pursuit of Happiness
You know, one of my pet peeves is how little credit reality television gets these days. I mean sure, it may seem a little overrated and edited, but come on, you know you love it. I know I do, my favorite reality show is MTV’s My Super Sweet 16, where teenage girls who are spoiled beyond belief throw their dream party, and they generally sound like this “You are cordially invited to my super sweet sixteen. Like O–M-G, it’s going to be fabulous. I’m going to have like the HOTTEST guys carrying me into the party. Beyonce is like gonna perform, we’re pretty tight you know. I’m going to have like gift bags with Dell laptops and the new iphone for EVERYONE. And maybe, like if I feel like it, I’ll take like a couple of you to ride in my brand new 2008 Mercedes that my daddy bought for my birthday. Yup it’s going to be the best day of my life” Wow, she sounds like the happiest girl in the world…but is she? Too many people today live in the world of false happiness, and too many people think this happiness comes from material possessions. Take Ava for example, who was the first girl featured on My Super Sweet 16, she flew all the way to Paris for her dress, only to come back with empty hands and a bad temper. Or Nicole from season 3, who hired male models to carry her into her party, and her dad bought her a $49,000 BMW 330 XI. These girls had the best parties of their lives, and they got everything that they wanted. And even though Audrey from season 5 said, “but $67,000 is a really good price for my happiness.” true happiness has nothing to do with materialism, and no amount of momentary pleasure can satisfy us.
To start, let’s evaluate words of wisdom by the English philosopher John Locke, who once said, “Men are in constant in the pursuit of happiness.” Everyone’s lives are so different, yet they are all, in a way, the same, we all live with the objective of being happy. Millions of Americans work from dawn to dusk to...
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