WIARA I ROZCZAROWANIE W CYWILIZACJI KONSUMPCYJNEJ
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Date
2004
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Wydział Prawa i Administracji UAM
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FAITH AND DISAPPOINTMENT IN CONSUMERIST SOCIETY
Abstract
The system of values, attitudes and behaviours related to consumption is becoming
a collection of key determinants and conditions of contemporary people’s lives, becoming their
most profound faith and their most painful disappointment. All individual buyers have the
faith, or at least conviction, that purchasing more and more new goods, if hardly useful or
altogether useless, will contribute to their happiness or, which need not mean the same, will
relieve them from pain. They also have the faith that the fate of civilisation in founded upon
consumption by the principle of chain of mutual relations: consumption-demand-production -
economic growth-social peace. These two types of faith have some characteristics of
quasi-religious doctrine. Most people, whether openly or secretly, deeply believe that
individual and collective happiness depends on consumption.
Like any other faith, also this one brings disappointment due to disproportionate needs
as well as excessive opportunities to satisfy one’s needs outgrowing the needs that one really
feels. The disappointment becomes yet more acute due to conflicting needs (e.g. physiological
and social needs) and the rapidity of occurrence of new needs before the tension is released
following the satisfaction of the previous need. Additionally, there are aspirations, obligations
and claims that one pursues as a result of social pressures, although they would otherwise
seem utterly foreign to him.
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Citation
Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny 66, 2004, z. 2, s. 261-270.
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0035-9629