Consider the following comments on consumerism.
We were promised that buying would fill the gap, and the gap is now the most profitable thing we own.
An economy that depends on dissatisfaction cannot afford for anyone to feel content.
We are no longer citizens who occasionally shop, but shoppers who occasionally vote.
The thing advertised is never the thing sold, since what we are really buying is the person we hope to become.
Every wardrobe full of clothes contains the ghost of a feeling we thought a purchase would fix.
Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A defensible thesis is that consumerism is not simply about buying things but about an economy that must keep us wanting, which means our discontent has become a resource to be cultivated rather than relieved. Open by acknowledging the genuine goods, that abundant consumer choice has lifted living standards and given ordinary people comforts once reserved for kings. Then press the contradiction: a system that profits from dissatisfaction has every reason to keep the gap between what we have and what we want permanently open. A useful third move questions whether the identities we assemble through purchases are freely chosen or carefully engineered by those who sell to us. Caution: avoid the smug asceticism that treats all consumption as moral weakness, which usually comes easiest to those already secure in their possessions.