We strive for a bigger house, a nicer car, "the finer things in life" as they are called. In many families the dual income is not an option; it is a necessity just to pay the bills. I was working in the auto sales industry for a time and I watched as many young couples and families sat in the finance manager's office and actually reworked their home/family budget just to get a nicer sound system in a car that was already costing them twenty percent or more of the monthly income for payments. What does this say about our culture? .
By the definitions written above, culture is built on the abstract things that motivate and move people in a society. One way to look at it is: how a society thinks so they become. The Webster definition talked about "transmitting knowledge." If this is so, what has our ancestry taught us and what are we teaching our children? After World War II the economy shot up with the growth of suburbs and consumerism. Cars got bigger and faster, houses got bigger and newer, TV took over radio as a more gratifying entertainment method. .
One lady born in 1936 said that before TV their family always ate together around the table, but after the TV entered the house it became the table. Dad said he had to keep up on the news and the shows so he could talk about them the next day at work. This particular lady said that she hated TV but she had to adapt if she wanted time with her family. So many others were absorbed by the growing cultural industry that was birthing through the TV and commercialism.
The term cultural industry needs defining before trying to understand culture. Cultural industries have usually been thought of as those institutions (mainly profit-making companies, but also state organizations and non-profit organizations) which are most directly involved in the production of social meaning. (Hesmondhalgh, 2002, p.11, original emphasis) Remember that these cultural industries do not make society that would for the most part fit in the category of economic or political categories, but they are trying to drive the culture around them.