Introduction
The North Americans have a rich and diverse culture that has made several influences on the continent and even in various parts of the world. Generally, the culture is a conglomeration of the Native American and European cultures that has undergone a lot of variation with industrialization and material progress coming with globalization. The changes are displayed in the languages spoken and literature, arts and music together with diet and fashion. The inter-generational and intra-generational changes in the American Culture is generally attributed to technological advancement, media influence, change in the communication patterns and dietary changes with modification of lifestyle. Other factors directly pointed to in the culture modification are modern career choices and the westernization.
Studies on younger generation reveal that their interests focus on the fresh insights in fashion desires with major areas including cell phones with all the latest technology, entertainment features like music, video games and movies, classic foot wares, modern electronics and online social sights like Facebook. These materials undergo high rate of turn over in the individual hands based on the youth craving to be at the forefront of market and brand changes. On the other hand, the adult population has also displayed exceptional characterization in their wealth acquisition, interaction with new technologies, social relations and consumption patterns.
The Northern American phenomenon, judged from the physical outlook can be said to be very materialistic. Considering the sky scrapper houses under construction, expansive businesses owned by individuals are never satisfied with money and huge profits made by family owned companies always grab media headlines. Materialism by any standards is at its peak in the USA and Canada. Baby boomers generation has declared to themselves that poverty and whatever circumstance will not be part of their life. They have dedicated their life to accumulating wealth to justify “the meaning of living”. To them, the material properties are the sole determinants of status therefore the word laziness has no meaning in their daily life.
The consumer patterns among the Americans shows a very worrying trend. American have likeness for the new brand product in the market therefore most of the malls, chain shops, supermarkets and even online market one will virtually get almost all the new products in the market. This makes consumers to be spoilt for choice as the past generation only had a few generic types of product.The bad consumption pattern has made shopping in America an art to be learned.
The negative trends in consumerism and materialism together creates a cycle of use-dispose-use again which is endless. The use of property owned definition of self-worth or determinant factor in societal status is unhealthy for the Americans. This issue has seen CEOs of big companies full of greed and exploitation arguing that it’s the nature of things in capitalistic societies.
The peaceful co-existence earlier enjoyed by the North Americans is now a thing of the past. The society has become uncontrollably violent using the learning institution as representative of the society behavior pattern carried from the family to the school compound. The violence in the school disrupts the learning programs as anticipation of violence hinder both the learners and the teachers from focusing on the respective serious business.
The anticipation of physical body injury deters the pupils’ learning capacity and even at some cases leads to absenteeism or dropout. Interestingly, research shows that all the bullies in school have one common characteristic-they are abused at home. For that reason, we should know that the future of America is dependent on today’s learners and that school authority cannot achieve a good learning environment singularly.
Being consumerist or materialist is not a bad behavior. However, when either or both of them become the major life driving powers, this can spell doom in the societal growth. It therefore important for the Americans to differentiate between capitalistic and individualism aspects of their culture. The national media has also been found to be the strongest culture influence tool in the USA based on the views they broadcast and the programs they air. Hence, warlike movies and cartoons watched by children especially on weekends needs to be regulated to compliment parents’ efforts in eradicating violence in the future nation.