Download Essay on Material Self and more Essays (high school) Ethics in PDF only on Docsity! THE MATERIAL SELF What motivates a person to acquire material possessions? How does material possessions affect work productivity and occupational achievement? Explain how material possessions influence a person's mental health? Discuss the factors that can lead to shopping and buying disorders? A person's material self is made up of his or her tangible possessions such as properties like house and lot, a car and other vehicles, clothes, gadgets, make up, and even the people surrounding them such as family and friends. It is not, however, limited to material objects, but also to non-material objects that someone can call their. This includes people, events, and experiences. Material possessions usually reflect or define a person's success or failure, and no one wants to be perceived as a failure. Thus, people feel that they have to compete every time to appear as someone successful. It also symbolizes one's social status. As a result, people works harder, the desire to acquire more possessions motivates them and increases their work productivity and helps them attain a higher occupational achievement. Some examples are when a newly graduate never gets tired of submitting his or her resume to different companies to get hired, when a worker gets motivated to finish all his tasks on time and do a good job to get a promotion and an increased salary so he could buy his dream house. The more people own and the more expensive it is, the more respect and compliments they receive as it also reflects hard work other than success and of course, the more you possess the higher your social status is. It also helps people acquire a sense of belonging, growth and purpose. This is the reason why regardless of how much material possession a person owns, they still can't be content and still strive to acquire more possessions to seek a higher level of achievement. However, material possessions also influence a person's mental health. Just like how it can motivate people, it can also disrupt one's mental health. For instance, when someone loses all of his material possessions due to an accident, calamities and disasters or negligence, or when someone loses his sense of self upon losing all of his possessions as it is the only reason he is accepted and valued by others. This could lead to materialism, where someone becomes too addicted and gives more importance to material possessions to the point of impulsive buying, where others even applied for a loan and thus, being indebted. Materialism could lead to psychological dysfunction which could be harmful.
