The largest sale of the season! Every merchandise is marked down! Clearance sale! 15-hour sale! Coupons, rebates, promotions, price reductions, half-off! Sound tempting...??? Many of us probably don’t realize that many of our decisions are based on how our senses are stimulated. What we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel is the main determinant as to what we define as pleasurable and not pleasurable. The subtle affects of our environment and the attractiveness of our bait play a huge part as to why we become the slaves of materialism rather than becoming the Master of Materialism.
If you don’t know what I am talking about.. then you missed our class two weeks ago..
If you want more info on it...
Please go to:
http://ccms.ntu.edu.tw/%7Edlcheng/us12.htm
Here is my after thought:
Temptations
Christine Lin
Our world is full of temptations; we are all attached and attracted to different things.Not just the hooks as we learned in class, but also the environment.I remember when I was in high school, my best friend and I always used to spend the entire day at the mall on the weekends. My mom would drop us off and we would spend all day at the mall going from store to store trying on different things. We would start the process all over again once we finished all the stores. My then-best friend always told me that she did not enjoy shopping with me because I didn’t buy anything.So under peer pressure, I would usually buy a drink or an ice cream cone.(No wonder I am so fat!)
Now that I am older, my kind of shopping is grocery shopping.Still, I would buy lots of things that I do not need. Like I shared in class, my mom and I used to go to the supermarket wanting to buy one thing.Yet, we go home with a truck load of stuff with everything except for the one thing we went to the market for in the first place.
With so many distractions and temptations, we have to watch out for people who try to sell us things that we do not need. For example, once in Taiwan, I saw something that I really liked and my friend tried to convince me to purchase the item.However, I insisted that I did not need the item and I had no room for it.My friend then told me that “it’s not about what you need, but what you want”.This incident exemplifies the modern view of material possessions.People buy things to satisfy their greed and their need for status.
This way of thinking is not limited to that of younger people.Once, I took a friend shopping who was a lot younger than me, and who had just recently started working.I advised him to be frugal and to not spend every penny he had.One of the store owners told me to just let him spend all the money he wanted so that he’ll have an incentive to make more money to keep up with the extravagant life style. This reminds me that not only doing what we think is right is important, but having the right state of mind is even more important.The store keeper’s view on spending is the reason why many youngpeople today drown in credit card debt. They either spend money that they do not have, or they are spending every penny they earn. This can become a big problem in the future as they get older, and they may eventually be a burden to society. This is something we should all think about and try to resolve.
接故事.... (B 版), (BL)