Rhetorical Analysis
The article, published in The Huffington
Post, “Viewing Consumer Culture Through the Lens of Addiction” written by
Charles Shaw is a truthful outlook on the views of addiction. Shaw examines others
observations on addiction as well as where their beliefs and findings
originated. Shaw interviews movie producers and writers, substance abuse
clinician, health researcher, psychotherapist, and social philosopher to see
what their research has led them to believe. Shaw argues that “Addiction is
really a hallmark of our era, and I think it reflects that we don’t have
culturally promoted kinds of other deeper forms of meaning and purpose in our
lives”(Shaw). This is because people have now turned to addiction to wanting
things that we don’t really need, so in turn it never is truly satisfying and
therefore the addictive cycle never ends.
Movie producer Sally Erickson, describes
what we experience during addiction as “a pattern of continually seeking more
of what it is we don’t really want and, therefore, never being fully satisfied.
And as long as we are never satisfied, we continue to seek more, while our real
needs are never being met.” Her stance on the matter is the idea that people
who are addicted to a certain thing, which usually has no real meaning in life,
will never receive any sort of pleasure from it because it is incapable of
fulfilling their needs. Actress, Stella Adler depicts an addict very directly,
“An addict is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is
wrong.” People are addicted to very obvious worldly things so you can deduce
when someone has a problem with addiction from their appearance. This is true
in many different areas of addiction; from drugs to someone who has an
addiction to eating you can see this by just looking at a person.
Shaw says it very well; people use
addiction as a coping mechanism “to put a buffer between ourselves and the
experience or awareness of our emotions.” He says this because it has been said
by psychotherapist, Tom Goforth, that the patients that he has “treated develop
as the result of some violation of the self, a deep wounding or trauma.” People
seem to become addicted to worldly things when hardships appear in their life
and the become addicts to cope with it. Turning to materialistic desires helps
them ignore the truth and reality of their life. Writer- Activist, Chellis
Glendinning, explains addiction even more simple, that we have “primary” and “secondary”
needs. “ ’Primary’ needs are those we are born to have satisfied: nourishment,
love, meaning, purpose and spirit.” While “secondary” needs which are the
addictive and unfulfilling ones are “drugs, violence, sex, material possessions
and machines.” This is something we see in our daily lives when you buy something
the question always arises, do I need this or do I want this? Most “secondary”
needs are personal desires that are not essential for life.
The influential independent documentary What
a Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire, is presented and used in Shaw’s article
to give imagery of an journey of a “middle class white father of three coming
to grips with climate change, resource crises, environmental meltdown and the
demise of the American lifestyle”(Shaw). This Documentary shows is a materialistic way of living in a
modern setting. One of the main points that stood out to me in this article was
the connection that industrial civilization leads to consumerism, which is the
stem of every addiction. Consumerism “has disconnected us from nature, the
cycle of life, our communities, our families, and ultimately, ourselves”(Shaw).
People, who are consumers, focus only on materialistic and worldly aspects and
lose sight of important and meaningful things along the way. Shaw talks about
this in comparison with other countries; the United States has “The pattern of
out-of- control consumption”, consuming over “70 times more than India, with three
times the U.S. population, is not qualitatively different from the known patterns
of behaviors of substance abusers.” That is a scary amount to override another
country by, and shows how addicted people in the United States are to consumption
and spending. “In a system based on consumption, the best patient a doctor, therapist
or pharmacist can ask for is one who never gets better”(Shaw). Shaw’s argument by concluding to this is
that the patient is always “recovering” instead of “recovered” therefore the
doctor will continuously make money by treating the sick patient. Shaw uses
ethos to get the reader to understand and agree with his ideas of addiction.
Corporations and consumers have a great
deal of influence on one another, without the relentless addiction of consumers
to always get the “next best thing” markets and corporations would crumble. The
social-control-through-indulgence model examines consumerism as “the vapidity
of a culture based in pleasure seeking”(Shaw). We see this play out in our
every day lives because people are never fully satisfied and always seeking for
something more. People struggle with this in many different areas; Morris
Berman says, “dependence on substances and corporeal pleasures is no different
from dependence on ‘prestige career achievement, world influence, (or) wealth.”
Typically you see addiction with pleasure and worldly possessions but wealth
and career achievement are addictive assets as well. Freud explains this ego
type behavior of consumerism “teaches the ego to let go of integrity and
inflate itself with an aesthetic, material process that confuses, or
associates, self-worth with net- worth.” People lose sight of necessities in
life and turn to a materialistic way of living that is unsatisfactory. This
materialistic way of living also leads to depression, anxiety, and lower
happiness. Through living with addiction, goals, ambitions, and morals are
demolished from this lifestyle.
All these aspects of addiction are visible
in our day-to-day lives because addiction is everywhere in the world and
especially in the United States. Shaw makes a very good argument taking a
stance on addiction by using others views and opinions on where addiction
derives and what causes it to occur. The hyperlinks that are available in the
online article in The Huffington Post is a helpful way to let the audience, who
is anyone reading the newspaper, learn more background information on the
sources and aids that Charles Shaw observes. He uses ethos to persuade the reader because the people
that he referred to in his article were credible and knew what they were
talking about and showed background to their findings and beliefs.
Shaw, Charles. "Charles Shaw:
Viewing Consumer Culture Through the Lens of Addiction." Breaking News
and Opinion on The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post, 06 June 2008. Web.
13 Feb. 2012.
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-shaw/viewing-consumer-culture_b_105750.html>.
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