Consumerism has become the driving force of the culture itself.
Shopping is a quest for meaning and personal identity.
In Lead Us Into Temptation, Twitchell, a professor at the University of Florida, offers a starkly different view from that of other academics, who lament the triumph of materialism. Why Money Fails To Satisfy in an Era of Excess attempts to prove that the accelerating rate of consumption, arising in part from the substitution of luxury goods for simpler wares, is damaging both to the economy and to the happiness of those doing the consuming. Juliet Schor's 1998 book, The Overspent American, portrays ordinary Americans as being prodded by the mass media to imitate the spending habits of the superrich. This leaves them miserable and stressed-out, as they work harder and longer to get more to spend. Twitchell, on the other hand, argues that if Americans find themselves swimming in a consumer culture, it's because that is where they want to be.