Society's Message
I just break out laughing whenever I hear about "our capitalist, consumer-driven society's message that happiness is achieved through acquiring money and possessions". If I had a dollar for every time I heard that one, I'd have enough to guarantee at least two years of blissful happiness and a month of mild satisfaction. Or whatever. I mean, WTF??? Are these people actually listening to themselves?
Now tell me -- you, yes, you -- have you ever personally met someone who ever said, with a straight face: "I believe that happiness is achieved through acquiring money and possessions"? No? Well, I didn't think so. How about a friend of a friend? Someone on the Internet? Books? Movies? Comic-books? Ah... right! That evil guy from James Bond, Goldfinger! Yay, we finally nailed one. So, yes, indeed, our corrupt, capitalist, consumer-driven society must indeed have sent this horrible message.
What a load of horse-crap. The truth is that the complete opposite of this message is one of the oldest, most stable, and most often chewed on clichés of our society: "Money can't buy me love". Think about all the Hollywood films... the self help books... or, think about religion. Or, if you're an atheist, think about the humanist secular movement -- on this point, atheism and religion actually agree. All the folklore that I grew up around seemed to point in one direction -- money cannot buy happiness, there are things way more important than money -- health, friendship, love, doing well whatever you do, going after your dreams, etc. And the weird thing is -- despite all these things being clichés, every time that someone reiterates them it is done with the air of revelation -- like it's something revolutionary, and going against all the accepted norms. It kind of reminds me of the "burning kittens is wrong" situation...
Now, I understand that the people who use these phrases don't really mean to be taken literally -- or, at least, that's what they'll jump up and say, now. They will probably say they meant this: the average person in a Western society is exposed to a lot of commercials, which use all phychological means known in order to make him or her buy the product. This prolonged exposure might distract people from the really important things in life... so they'll just spend their entire lives going after the next iPod or Prada or Porsche, or whatever.
You know what? Not convincing. If that's the argument they want to make (and I gave it my best shot), then it's a really, really weak one -- and certainly one that's very far off from the original indignant and extreme phrasing.
I think that the main thing that bothers me about it is that it assumes things about other people that are just not true. I'm not sure how to explain this... maybe just refer to XKCD's sheeple fallacy. It just makes people feel good about themselves to think that other people are overly materialistic, for example; or don't think for themselves, or don't really try to reach their dreams, or other such things -- even when evidence suggests that in reality, there is a pretty solid consensus on these issues.
So I have to say, despite that this might sound a bit too Ain Rand-ish: when someone starts to go on about "our materialistic society" and how money and possessions can't bring you any happiness, it's usually a good bet that they'll go on and share their ideas about what you should do with your money and possessions, instead. Maybe I'm too bitter... but unlike these people, I'm actually speaking from experience.