In the mid 1800s, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his novel Democracy in America. This work was an extensive study of American democracy. ... To Tocquecille, two other side effects of equality are individualism and materialism. ... Materialism also results from a passion for equality because people think that they ought to be able to have as much wealth as everyone else. The effect of materialism is people may be so absorbed in their personal pursuit of wealth that they neglect to use their political freedom. ...

• Word Count: 520
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the book entitled American Ways authored by Gary Althens highlighted nine values and assumptions shared by Americans. The nine values are individualism, competition, privacy, equality, informality, the future, change and progress, time, achievement, action, work and materialism, and directness and assertiveness. ... As the summit of American values are the concept of achievement, action, work, and materialism. ... Although those values are considered common for Americans, they are viewed differently by non-Americans even contradictorily. ... Competitiveness which is something pervasive for...

• Word Count: 574
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Parents helped the growth of materialism by signing up for credit cards. ... The baby boom generation began to introduce materialism, a peril of mass culture that exists today because materialism is cycle that can only be stopped by a drastic event, it won't end on its own. ... As materialism and the boomers increased veterans who were new parents were forced to adapt to the changes of a society. ... Parents financially had to adapt to the needs of kids, the bills of a house, and materialism. ... A common stereotype of Americans is they are lazy. ...

• Word Count: 1336
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

American Renaissance Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," belongs to the period known as American romanticism, the period called, by F.O. Matthiessen, the American Renaissance. ... Recent texts have challenged Matthiessen's notion of an American Renaissance, pointing out that the work of major American authors of this period did not occur in a vacuum. ... American romanticism shares a number of characteristics with British romanticism, but it has its own uniquely American characteristics as well, growing as it does from a particularly American brand of religious thought (parti...

• Word Count: 917
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

When Tocqueville first came to America in 1831, the first american ideal that would stand out to him was the equality of social conditions in american society. ... While on his 1831 tour of America, Tocqueville noted the large impact that New England had on the rest of american political culture. ... Even though Tocqueville noted the weakness of the American state, he stated that the strength of the american civil society compensated for it. Tocqueville also found the impact of materialism on the american people fascinating. ... I do draw parallels between the liberal ideals still held in New ...

• Word Count: 625
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?"... Ginsberg and his close knit circle of friends commonly referred to as the beat poets felt that the postwar prosperity of America was laced with hypocrisy, conformity and materialism. Materialism is the general evil that haunts Ginsberg and he preaches against it in Sunflower Sutra. ... Materialism is the grime of the sunflower and the sunflower is civilization itself. ... Perhaps this was why he rebelled against the world and the way we did things in America. ...

• Word Count: 1238
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In "American Values and Assumptions", Gary Althen clarifies the American cultural values that intersect and how they work together. These values are perceived by Americans and sometimes are different with other cultures in the world. Generally, he gives evidences taking from American social notions such as the freedom, self-reliance to explain how strongly people devote to individualism. ... Moreover, there is a stable relationship between the change and progress, similarly to achievement, action and materialism. ... In the article, Althen gives an example of how American parents tea...

• Word Count: 576
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

(Topic) The view taken by Lewis Lapham of "the American faith in money" meticulously identifies the covetous sentiment shared by our people. (Tell #1) Since the formation of this nation, Americans have been materialistic. (Show #1) Henry Adams observed how "deflected by the pursuit of money" the Americans were. ... (Tell #2) The American people attempt to use their wealth to prove their "worth" to others and themselves. ... (Tell #3) Citizens of other countries largely have not had the same opportunities as Americans. ...

• Word Count: 357
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

American Government Study Guide Theocracy - a system of government in which God himself rules personally or through chosen representatives. ... Materialism - Matter is eternal and everything. ... Cornerstone of American Government - The Bible Common Law - a non-codified form of law based on long-accepted customs and traditions. ... Great Awakening - The spiritual revival which swept the American colonies between 1730 and 1760. ... Chappie James - The first black American in the history of the US armed forces to achieve the rank of four-star general. ...

• Word Count: 606
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

A timeless statement by Thomas Jefferson that epitomizes what the American Dream originally stood for upon the creation of our great country. ... Scott Fitzgerald uses Jay Gatsby to illustrate the corruption and eventual downward spiral of the American Dream to the vulgar pursuit of wealth and materialism in the 1920s. ... Gatsby's life is much like the American Dream, in that, America in the 1920s had become a place where nothing could be attained and attempting to transcend ones social status was futile. ... The Great Gatsby is a novel about what happened to the American Dream in the 1...

• Word Count: 1786
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Counterculture was concerned with materialism, sexual repression and what they considered unreasonable expectations placed on them by society. ... In the case of the antiwar movement, this authority came in the form of the US government, and the oppression it was attempting to preempt was literal oppression against the Vietnamese in the form of the war, and against American citizens in the form of the draft. ... The similarities were even more pronounced in the case of the civil rights movement were participants were struggling against the racist white establishment and its very direct and lit...

• Word Count: 385
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

However, gradually assumptions about The Tempest's relations with American colonization accumulated and "American school" of Tempest interpretation began to emerge. ... Caliban was no longer just an American Indian, he also became the reflections of the African slave and the European wild man; or the blend if several American Indian types. ... Shakespearen scholars of that day argued that Caliban emblematized the crudeness and materialism of the united States. Prospero, they argued, urged his disciples to seek art, beauty, virtue and truth, warning them against materialism and utilitari...

• Word Count: 2369
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

While the penny press was expanding it's boundaries in Canada the telegraph and telephone was starting to capture a hold of the American population. ... By this time, half of America had radios and most people accepted and applauded the idea of national broadcasting. ... America is a society where everyone owns at least one television set, and is the most used appliance in households where watching it daily has become routine. ... In Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, he aims to demonstrate the overpowering influence of entertainment and materialism on our daily live...

• Word Count: 972
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In the first instance, it is the non- believers and most importantly, it is the U.S. and the Americans, in the latter the hatred of racially inferior people like the Jews, gypsies, mentally disabled, homosexuals or any other group that did not fit a strict set of qualifications as a pure and loyal Aryan. ... To this end, fascism calls for a "spiritual revolution" against signs of moral decay such as individualism and materialism, and seeks to purge "alien" forces and groups that threaten the community. ...

• Word Count: 619
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

When World War I ended in 1918 several young Americans who had fought in the war returned to America with a heightened disillusion of reality, as the horrors of the war made everyday life and social morality of the early 1900's seem trivial. Following the recession of 1921-1922, the nations economy grew spectacularly, which led a new age of consumerism and materialism as one newspaper announced, "The first responsibility of an American to his country is no longer that of a citizen, but of a consumer. " During the 1920's the perception of the American Dream was that an individual co...

• Word Count: 1603
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

During one of the most significant periods of twentieth century America, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. sought to hypothesize the elements of American politics that allowed the United States to escape the Great Depression of 1929, Roosevelt's New Deal, and fight the second world's war, without the federal government becoming a dictatorship. ... The conservative and liberal battles create a conflict in the American social classes, and Schlesinger believed this class conflict to be the factor that saved America. ... It is very plausible that a select group of men that, with so much control o...

• Word Count: 1042
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The two decades between World War I and World War II were a golden age of American fiction. ... From the understanding and annotation of the whole age, he saw the fall of American values: American Dream. 1. ... Car is like house, tending to be associated with the materialism of American Dream. ... However, what makes difference is Fitzgerald universalized his personal experience and widened his own horizon, successfully building a bridge between individual and society, which came to endow the hero Gatsby a profound symbolic meaning: Gatsby is the epitome and symbol of self-mad...

• Word Count: 1437
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Pop art was an art movement that emerged during the 1950's in England and America. ... Images that reflected the vulgar materialism of modern mass culture were used to provide a perception of reality even more immediate than that offered by the realistic paintings of the past modernists. ... In the 1950's United States, Robert Rauschenberg created collages constructed from household objects such as quilts and pillows, and Jasper Johns had a series of paintings depicting American flags and bull's-eye targets. ... In 1961 Claes Oldenburg, an American, constructed the first of his ...

• Word Count: 968
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

This is a story of the Great Possibility, what America COULD be, and what it has lost by not working past its prejudices and fears. ... Because of the subordinate status Mexican American students received an inferior quality of education and subtractive curriculum . As a result even today there is a pattern disproportionate academic performance among Mexican American. ... Without placing blame or guilt; Takaki discusses, the Mexican American group whose role in history have deeply affected the American experience. ... One of the most popular of those finds a lot of inspiration in the so-cal...

• Word Count: 2799
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

With the discovery of America and the following expansion of economic markets, a new manufacturing class arises. ... Such materialism keeps them enslaved. ... In America capitalism was based on a laissez-faire economic system. ... These laws allowed the American working class to bridge the gap with the upper-class bourgeoisie running government. ... Afterall, the examples of 19th century Britain and America after the Great Depression prove Marx's idea had some influence on society. ...

• Word Count: 1638
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

"The Catcher in the Rye" is set in America in the 1950's a decade of common teenage rebellion that was evident in many aspects such as clothing music and attitudes towards authority. ... America in the 1950's was a country of great military power, a society of high conservatism driven by consumerism. America represented materialism and its people believed that America was the greatest country in the world. ... A stated America in the 1950's was a conservative society and People whose beliefs differed from the norm were often denounced as un-American or "communist sympathizers"...

• Word Count: 1661
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Naturalism and materialism were two Enlightenment ideals that Hamann would not buy into. ... He frowns upon both the settlers of America and their equivalents today, us, by saying that both groups look at nature as a potential income source. ...

• Word Count: 1018
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The key characteristics of Marxism in philosophy are its materialism and its commitment to political practice. ... Beard made a great impact on American historiography in the 20th century with his focus on the philosophy of historical study and his relativistic argument concerning the knowledge of history. ... The essay contains examples of how the American Historical Association varied in its view of how history should be studied. ... Erickson was a German-born American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychosocial development of human beings. ...

• Word Count: 1717
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Hemingway and Fitzgerald were keen observers of the changes in women's behavior and they worked enthusiastically to reflect the female's point of view in their novels. The Victorian Era which ended in late 1800s, enforced male dominance and female dependency which led to the inequality between gende...

• Word Count: 1622
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

It embodies and encourages an "I-it" culture of impersonal materialism that obstructs the path to peace by devaluating human life. ... When confronted about this scheme, Milo rationalizes that he didn't directly kill them, simply because the Germans and the Americans were going to kill each other anyways, and everyone had a share in the event. ... Heller likewise pokes fun at the gullibility and shallowness of American society, revealing that "the sweetest part of the whole deal was that there was no need to reimburse the government at all" (259), showing that society...

• Word Count: 2037
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: Undergraduate