The acquisition of consumer goods (stuff) to make our lives more comfortable and luxurious succinctly describes the consumer mindset. (Consumerism – a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.) But it has come at a high price in which those few (the 20% within developed countries) have largely ignored the true cost to the rest of the world and to especially to the natural world. The rest of the world is catching up technologically with what we have come to take for granted and along with it all the pollution and environmental degradation that comes with it. And that is on top of all the ecological harm that was already occurring because of economic colonialism from developed nations.
To put it bluntly, with the technologies we are developing, we have to become a peaceful, caring, compassionate world with real social justice, equity, unity and sustainability, otherwise humanity is looking at the black hole of its time as a dominant species on this planet. Our problem is Spiritual and it requires a spiritual solution (not religious per se) where we have conscious connection to all life and the planet. We cannot continue to use a highly flawed and destructive economic paradigm to shape our materialistic lives. And to do that we need to have a radical shift in our value and belief systems.
There is a good term, first coined in 1977 by American social scientist Ronald Inglehart – Post-materialism. It describes a value orientation that emphasizes self-expression and quality of life and not only economic and physical security, which is typical of the materialist paradigm. Until Inglehart had come up with the idea of this new value orientation, nearly everyone subscribed to the notions that materialist values such as economic growth and maintaining social order were of primary concern. The exception to this in the western world in the 1960s and 1970s were the Hippies and their communes that are an anathema to materialist ideology. While materialism as an idea had been around for centuries it really didn’t take hold until the industrial revolution. The groups known as the Bohemians in Europe and the Transcendentalists in America were probably most influential in promoting the origins of what we are now calling post-materialism, with goals such as environmental protection, freedom of speech, and gender equality. It really is the transformation of materialist economic and physical security values to those of autonomy, individual sovereignty and self-expression.
In materialism, happiness is achieved through the acquisition of more stuff but as most of us are finding out that seems like a hollow path to follow and increasingly, one that is evermore difficult as the wealth siphons up to the already uber-wealthy instead of circulating with the common person (see earlier posts the world economy – are we really doing better? Measurement is everything! {August 2018} and Rethinking Economics 3 – A Rant about Corruption and Preoccupation with Money {October 2019}). And therein lies the trap we now find ourselves in. I keep saying this, but the way out of the trap is to transform our thinking and that means looking consciously at our beliefs and values and more importantly, making a conscious choice to change them, which is the key to releasing us from the economic jail in which we find ourselves.
In 1992, social researchers Richins and Dawson discuss the root of materialism as a belief that the world and the universe is just physical matter where all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. If this is the case for a belief system, it is easy to see how such conceptual framing can push us to accept that ‘stuff’ is the be all and end all of existence. But post-materialism is the opposite of being focused on material possessions. I don’t want to get into an in-depth philosophical discussion, but post-materialism is as much a refocus on abstract ideas of self and consciousness. As a jokester said, ‘the one that dies with the most toys, still dies, and can’t take anything with them just like the one who dies with no toys.’ A transformational notion here is that true success isn’t about stuff but about happiness and well-being, both of which are not material but conceptual.
When a materialist thinks of happiness and well-being, they are directly linked to stuff and physical security. When a post-materialist thinks of happiness and well-being it is connected to an inner sense of self and community. We think we are what we see in the mirror, but as Buckminster Fuller said, 99% of who you are cannot be seen, felt, tasted, or touched. Indeed, what we sense with our physical senses is less than one-millionth of reality out there. We now know that everything exists within the realm of quantum physics, even consciousness itself. The genius Erwin Schrödinger said, “The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.” Now that’s a little heavy, but it really is a statement that everything is connected at the quantum level. Happiness resides within us from how we perceive the world around us and not from acquisition of anything physical.
Psychologists will say that well-being is a state of happiness and contentment, with low levels of distress, overall good physical and mental health and outlook, or good quality of life (QOL). And that term QOL is one I have discussed at length in earlier posts in this blog. A focus on standard of living (SOL) is materialistic while a focus on QOL (as uniquely different from SOL) is post-materialistic. A materialist view links both SOL and QOL as the same idea, but a post-materialist view sees them both as separate ideas but not mutually exclusive of each other. To a post-materialist, quality is the primary focus and then standard. Many people around the world live in ‘poor’ conditions with low standards of living but have very high levels of quality in their lives. That is because they have that connectedness. Here in America for instance, we have a high SOL, but often a very low QOL. Most in America may have individualism but little true freedom since many are trapped within a ruthless economic system that literally enslaves their souls and minds. So how does one break out of the ‘system’ that enslaves them and find a system that liberates them to be sovereign and able to control their own QOL? Well for starters it’s about understanding how to make choices in your beliefs and values that match a better way of living.
To Be Continued …………………
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