From a demanding society to a society of values

At a round­TABLE event, ACADEMIA SUPERIOR dis­cussed dis­cussed con­sumerism, a preva­lent all-risk-insur­ance men­tal­i­ty, and a lack of self-esteem and respon­si­bil­i­ty in our society.

Demand think­ing cur­rent­ly seems wide­spread: the more you have, the more every­thing is tak­en for grant­ed – and we always want more. Are peo­ple turn­ing into insipid con­sumers, increas­ing­ly dis­sat­is­fied cit­i­zens, who mis­take „more” for „bet­ter”?

Many things are con­sumed instead of liv­ing them: enter­tain­ment, news, pol­i­tics, even edu­ca­tion has become a com­mod­i­ty and threat­ens to lose value.

Are the caus­es of this phe­nom­e­non in a gen­er­al decay of val­ues, in how we com­mu­nit­cate, or in the nature of man? Does ego­ism actu­al­ly rule or is it only more vis­i­ble due to cur­rent devel­op­ments? Are peo­ple uncon­scious­ly pro­grammed to sole­ly be consumers?

These were the ques­tions of a Round­TABLE event, which took place in Timelkam. A small num­ber of peo­ple vivid­ly dis­cussed the caus­es of this devel­op­ment and thought about solutions.

Self-esteem is key 

Even though dif­fer­ent views on the caus­es and char­ac­ter­is­tics were dis­cussed, there was agree­ment on pos­si­ble solu­tions to change into a val­ue society:

The prin­ci­ple of „being instead of hav­ing” is an essen­tial anchor for more sat­is­fac­tion. All mea­sures that strength­en or pro­mote people’s sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty and self-esteem from an ear­ly age are there­fore essen­tial. Anyone who is aware of their indi­vid­ual unique­ness and tal­ents is less tempt­ed to strength­en self-esteem through short-lived con­sump­tion from the out­side and looks more opti­misti­cal­ly into the future.

Specif­i­cal­ly, the dis­cus­sion focused on the intro­duc­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive ethics edu­ca­tion in school, the ini­ti­a­tion of pub­lic dis­cus­sions on the ques­tion of what is impor­tant for a ful­filled life and how social growth can lead to unique­ness and authen­tic­i­ty, or the cre­ation of open spaces for chil­dren and ado­les­cents, to devel­op and become self-reliant. At the end of the day, every­one should be encour­aged and empow­ered to ask them­selves these very questions.