Is American Society Way Too Materialistic?

There is a silent killer in all of our homes, right now.

As you sit reading this paper, it sits waiting for you. It is not a homicidal attacker, a new strain of bird flu or toxic radon gas leaking from the soil. It is something much more simple, preventable and mundane: comparison.

In America, we tend to constantly compare ourselves to our peers. While it is this drive to overtake each other that has led to America's awesome success, it is also a major factor in many of our social failures. It may not be a coincidence that we have the highest rates of heart disease, obesity and high blood pressure in the world, and also the least vacation time, greatest disparity in wages between executives and workers, and no universal health care plan.

As someone who has been fortunate enough to visit 44 different countries and live and attend school in Costa Rica for eight months, I have seen many nations with vastly different social concepts than those of the United States.

While living in Costa Rica, I saw that the people there seemed to be much happier and kinder toward one another than the people here. They did not focus so much on whether or not they had outperformed their neighbor as they did on whether or not they were satisfied. When I attended school there, the other pupils were amazed by the fact that I felt driven to be in the top 10 percent of the class. While I was working hard to earn a higher grade than the others, they were working for their own benefit.

Even though the result of this philosophy is that these students were not producing the same level of work as students in a more competitive environment, I think that they are better and more well-rounded people for it. They were happier overall because they enjoyed life not for the material gain or the promise of it, but for the joys found in whatever they were doing. Instead of putting themselves through suffering and hardship to reap financial rewards, many chose to accept less financially in order to gain more leisure time.