03-02-2012, 11:12 AM
This link is a well written article detailing the negative impact materialism has had on the human race: http://www.whale.to/c/truth19.html
Excerpt:
The Life of this World: Everyone is Mentally Ill
Due to the amount of propaganda and advertising in the environment of the technological society, and the way it has changed the thinking of individuals involved in the society, a chain-reaction has been set off through which the core perceptions about why we exist have been altered. Every aspect of human action has been reformed to meet this new paradigm of materialism. Instead of viewing things in terms of what we need spiritually and emotionally in order to bring us happiness and contentment, we instead look to the material world to satisfy all of our needs.
There is an extreme level of importance put on work, and having a “good job”, so that we may all have the means to purchase these unneeded objects. The confidence level of an individual is determined by his capacity to obtain wealth, with which one can purchase material goods. Male sex appeal, formerly determined by strength of both physique and character, is now based almost entirely on the man’s capacity to secure material goods for his partner. The whole drive of society has been altered by these changes in perception of what we are, with secondary effects such as seeing people with more objects than we have obtaining social status for this, and so desiring to be more like them by finding a way of somehow acquiring more goods.
The catch here is that there is always more to buy, more to consume or fill bigger and bigger homes with, more exotic locales to vacation at, and so contentment within such a paradigm is necessarily impossible. This triggers a pathological state, this concept of chasing ghosts up the corporate ladder, trailing this illusion that products and services do in fact lead to contentedness, if you just have enough of the right ones. The entire concept of self-preservation has undergone a massive involution, collapsing in on itself, to the point where we are incapable of determining a difference between material wealth and quality of life.
So, given that they have been grown in such a culture, it is no surprise that westerners are confounded by the happiness of folks living in bamboo huts in the jungle “with nothing”.
Excerpt:
The Life of this World: Everyone is Mentally Ill
Due to the amount of propaganda and advertising in the environment of the technological society, and the way it has changed the thinking of individuals involved in the society, a chain-reaction has been set off through which the core perceptions about why we exist have been altered. Every aspect of human action has been reformed to meet this new paradigm of materialism. Instead of viewing things in terms of what we need spiritually and emotionally in order to bring us happiness and contentment, we instead look to the material world to satisfy all of our needs.
There is an extreme level of importance put on work, and having a “good job”, so that we may all have the means to purchase these unneeded objects. The confidence level of an individual is determined by his capacity to obtain wealth, with which one can purchase material goods. Male sex appeal, formerly determined by strength of both physique and character, is now based almost entirely on the man’s capacity to secure material goods for his partner. The whole drive of society has been altered by these changes in perception of what we are, with secondary effects such as seeing people with more objects than we have obtaining social status for this, and so desiring to be more like them by finding a way of somehow acquiring more goods.
The catch here is that there is always more to buy, more to consume or fill bigger and bigger homes with, more exotic locales to vacation at, and so contentment within such a paradigm is necessarily impossible. This triggers a pathological state, this concept of chasing ghosts up the corporate ladder, trailing this illusion that products and services do in fact lead to contentedness, if you just have enough of the right ones. The entire concept of self-preservation has undergone a massive involution, collapsing in on itself, to the point where we are incapable of determining a difference between material wealth and quality of life.
So, given that they have been grown in such a culture, it is no surprise that westerners are confounded by the happiness of folks living in bamboo huts in the jungle “with nothing”.