According to Joshua Becker, writer at Becoming Minimalist, the constant yearning for more material goods is something we can't escape, no matter how hard we try.
That's because it's engrained in all facets of our daily life, starting from the ads we see as we walk to work.
"In our culture, in America specifically, we have a society that's just built on consumerism, and it's just built on consumption," he told HuffPost Live's Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani.
"So 5,000 advertisements we see every single day that all feed us the exact same message -- that more is better, that we would be happier if we owned whatever they were selling and that we need whatever they'e selling," he continued. "Eventually we just start buying into this lie, and we start believing it probably even more than we realize and as a result, I think we start searching for happiness at department stores more than we would care to admit."
Watch the full HuffPost live segment on consumerism in America below:
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