I went into the Foundations of Business course with expectations

to learn about just that, the foundations of business. It wouldnt be an

exaggeration to say that the material covered in lecture and many of
the class discussions have opened my eyes in such a way that I find
difficult to express. I perceive that, along with other factors, being
raised to adulthood on the outskirts of a small town with a population
of about 2,000 residents has contributed to the value I place in
meditating the things of life. How something has come to be, why
some people do what they do, and so on, are the kinds of things that I
have spent countless hours analyzing.
Until taking this course, I had not even begun to fully understand
the magnitude of influence that money has on our society in everyday
life. To say that this world revolves around money would, in a sense,
be an understatement. The countless hours that are consumed in
attempts to acquire wealth are often the same hours that define who
we are at the very core. Money gained, for example, is time that could
have been used to cultivate a deeper sense of meaning or to add value
to the people we love. This concept often brings to mind the lyrics of a
song I once heard by Jesse Lacey. Some men die under a mountain
just looking for gold. Some die looking for a hand to hold. The part
that the song wouldnt include is that the man looking for a hand to
hold likely had his fair share of looking for gold before becoming
exhausted in his old age and realizing that life might have more to
offer.
The very idea that our society has given money the power to
choose on our behalf what our occupation should be, regardless of
what personal passions and aspirations we might have, has caused me
to question whether or not any of it is even worth it. For various
reasons through out the duration of this course I have found myself
questioning whether I want to continue down my current path of
education or pursue another. Although it may be considered common
for a college student to go back and forth, changing their major, most
would find it unusual for me at 30 yrs. old to be so indecisive about
what profession I want to pursue.
While most college students might have enrolled right out of high
school with little experience in the work force, its likely that I have had
more jobs than the typical 30 year-old. I, along with countless others,
have experienced the unrelenting demand of time and energy that is
found in the workforce. And though some would deem it minuscule, I
have endured the agony of working side by side, 40 hours a week, with
someone I could hardly stand to be around in a place where I was
treated like a servant by an ungrateful manager. In any scenario, like
many claiming to be living the American dream, the devastatingly
long pay period would finally cycle through and allow me to receive my
paycheck and for the next few days, at least until it was gone, all of the
work I had done to obtain it seemed worth it.

Its not about the work. Its not even about the paycheck. Its
about a universal epidemic that began decades ago and continues
today. Its the urge to satisfy the wants that were carefully designed to
make us want them in the first place. Manipulative tactics that move
the consumer into action have so many of us held captive in our own
desire to obtain. My paycheck could have probably stretched on
through the pay cycle had I been more conscious of my spending
habits, but the problem I saw in that was that I would actually have to
be more conscious of my spending habits. Another solution to this
would be to simply make more money. I certainly was not going to
cancel my HD satellite television or switch back over to a slower
Internet service provider at home. The question of moving into a
cheaper, smaller apartment or a less luxurious car was not an option
either. I would rather justify my position and claim that the kids
deserve a nice place to live or that its more important to have a
reliable vehicle than to have an economic one. As though each luxury
in my life was a different addiction that I was not able to do without, I
found that the desire to obtain more only increases as more is
obtained. The drug addict continually fiends for more without
considering the negative side effects from using, because taking drugs
for the addict has long since passed through the fun I want phase
and entered into a dangerous phase in which the user not only
recognizes the drug as a need, but has to then consume more in order
to achieve marginal satisfaction. Aside from the immediate negative
effects that each have on society, the main difference between
satisfying a drug habit and satisfying the urge to obtain more goods is
that obtaining more goods is encouraged by society. The majority
applauds it when an individual has more than enough to show for their
hard work.
In his book, The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith
described this phenomenon so eloquently when he said, The process
by which wants are satisfied is also the process by which wants are
created. The more wants are satisfied, the more new ones are born.
Production only fills a void that it has itself created. The market is now
so saturated with goods that the term, beggars cant be choosers,
has no place. Dumpsites and recycle centers are continuously being
compacted with Finished Goods scrap while large corporations incur
Millions of dollars annually as a result of expired, unsold product. The
principles of supply and demand, in a given industry, have become
increasingly difficult to determine. At a time when marketing
campaigns advertise so effectively and sway so many determinants,
wants become artificial needs as though from the twinkling of an eye.
Internet agencies now exploit our participation of their services by
tracking our every click of the mouse in order to present us with
advertisements in real time. I have heard it said that the younger
generations claim to be desensitized to the current bombardment of

ads, but there is no question that innovative and more effective means
of marketing are springing up as fast as they are losing traction. So
effective are the current day marketing methods that I believe we as
consumers are being successfully persuaded through our
subconscious.
As if it were not hopeless enough, other factors besides the sheer
sake of wanting, add to our itch to obtain. Galbraith also brings to
attention that in a society such as ours, one of the principal social
goals is a higher standard of living. This view causes an even greater
or higher desire to get superior goods since in order to maintain a
prestigious reputation in our society, more must be owned by the
individual.

In the situation that I find myself personally, I am frequently

engaging in an intrapersonal struggle of choosing a career path I am
sure to enjoy or choosing one that I might not hate for the sake of
making more money. Im not per say interested in making more
money for the sake of wanting more, but along the same lines of
maintaining a prestigious reputation, I feel it a financial obligation as
the man of the house to give my family as much as I am humanly
capable of giving no matter what the costs. This social or moral
pressure has sparked a conversation between my wife and I more than
once. If only we could move out to a farm somewhere far from the
city where we could grow our own food and medicine.where our
work everyday would be nothing more than tending to our animals and
cropsand we could live in peace, out of reach from media and
advertisements.where we could focus on the things that matter
most and raise our children free of modern day corruption. After
considering this for a bit I then turned to my wife and said, I bet it
wouldnt be long before we were calling around to see how far out
Winder Dairy delivers. The life we live in now is the life we are
accustomed to. Many of our habits were passed down to us and can
be extremely difficult to change. The cycle of satisfying wants by
producing and producing in order to create wants is so deeply
embedded into our human behavior. The countless generations of
limitless wants, and their supply, have skewed our ability to discern
what is truly important and what we ourselves really want. Its time we
start asking what we need again. If things continue the way theyve
been going, another devastating economic crisis just might force us to
ask ourselves what we need.
I went into the Foundations of Business course with
expectations to learn about just that, the foundations of business, but

what I personally ended up taking away from the course is much more
than that.