The High Cost of Materialism is an interesting subject, but the author isn't up to the challenge he sets for himself. The Preface and Introduction are excellent. Both are succinct expressions of the problems that a market-driven economy creates within an individual looking for happiness.
But the method the author uses to accomplish his goal is falls short.
First of all, the author tries to make the claim that "If a person is aware of the effect of materialism in their life, they will probably become happy." This claim is weak at best. There are many people who are happy accumulating stuff. (I don't happen to be one of them, but I don't claim to represent all consumers in the world).
2nd, the author uses questionaires to determine what makes people happy.
He develops an 'Aspiration Index' with questions like:
1) 'Your image will be one others find appealing'
2) 'You will be famous'.
There are 15 of these questions.
He gives this questionaire to 350 people. And then he assumes these responses are an accurate portrayal of all consumers.
But, the sampling technique is terrible. I'm surprised the colleagues who reviewed this article didn't point this out.
For the 350 people, he chooses ONLY
(a) college students
(b) from one or two universities.
Holy cow! A book on the psychological effects
of materialism, seen through the eyes of college students.
What subset of America is represented by "18-22 years olds in University"?
To me, that makes all the conclusions based on his questionairre responses invalid, or spurious at best.
The book sets up many arguments of why people find materialism frustrating, and then refutes each of these. Sometimes finding some psychological 'causes'. But these arguments are created in his head, and the refutation is just the same.
In the final chapter, the author proposes his 'solutions' for an individual to take so he/she's less impacted by a Materialistic society.
Now, this is interesting, because it assumes a person can choose to not be affected by their own society. A cultural anthropologist would argue against this assumption.
Here are a couple of the 'solutions'.
#3: "Get off the materialistic treadmill".
#4: "Ask yourself why you really want the money, looks or fame."
My reaction to these 'solutions' was to realize, they won't help me.
A major problem with this whole book is, it assumes the individual can remove himself/herself from the way society judges others, without any negative feedback. To me, materialism exists because it's a groupthink type
of phenomenon. I'm often judged by what i wear and drive. Just because i know others are negatively judging me by what i own, and not acting warmly because i don't own what they've been told is 'good', doesn't mean i can control the situation or other people's responses. Yes, i can make my own choices. But my choices are then judged by others. And this judgment by others is what causes conformity. And the conformity is the driving motivator for a materialistic society.
So, i commend the author for taking up the subject. And i felt he wrote an excellent problem statement. But his research to find the causes, and his attempt to postulate a conclusion, left me feeling his whole approach is nothing more than wishful thinking.