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materialism, culture, spiritual culture
September 15, 2011 - 5:12pm
This topic COULD go in Body and Soul but I'm putting it here in Humanities and Culture.
"People in our society are not materialistic enough."
Discuss.
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Some context below and why I thought this might be interesting to look at.
J B Foster wrote:
... economist Juliet Schor has written of the "materiality paradox," which suggests that people in our society are not too materialistic, but rather are not materialistic enough. We no longer retain, reuse, and repair products, because we have been taught to expect them to break down or fall apart due to product obsolescence, and then quickly to discard them. Indeed, as a society, we have become entrapped in a still deeper pattern of psychological obsolescence, promoted by modern marketing, encouraging us to throw away what we have only just bought-as soon as it is no longer "new."
This is from "The Ecology of Marxian Political Economy" - a recent essay by J B Foster of Monthly Review.
That's an interesting way to look at materialism, ikosmos.
I think what drives our throw-away culture is the amount of wealth we have, relative to past times. If you had parents or grandparents who lived in the Depression, you'll know that they saved everything and used (and repaired...and repaired...and repaired!) what they had until it was truly unusable.
Today, if something stops working (aside from the fact that many things aren't repairable), most people just toss the thing away and buy a new one. More than that, even if something is perfectly functional, people will toss things and buy something new simply because their are tired of what they have (home furnishings, clothes, etc.). Only a society with wealth that far exceeds subsistance level can afford to do that. And, it's not just the rich who do that. Most people do (other than the truly poor).
The poor quality and cheaper cost make a difference too. I'd argue families were better off in the 60's when everyone had a house, 2 cars and 4 kids. Try that now on one income.
Of course, culture has changed. Things really are relative to culture. I'm very counter-culture but I wouldn't be where I am without making considerable concessions to my beliefs. We're all a victim of the system we're supposed to conform to. I could get by wearing my 1980's clothes, which have been well taken care of and are in great shape. However, I don't see myself fitting in at work with my neon-orange Ocean Pacific gear.
Perhaps, we need a "COLLECTIVE" introspection at just what the MSM is forcing down our throats.
I take issue Sven with your assertion that we are wealthier than ever before. I don't think we've ever been poorer. Money bought you quality back in the day. Today, it's a disposable society. Including, disposable human beings. I want no part of it.
Right. It would be nothing short of a miracle for most cars made in the 1960s to make it 100,000 miles. Most were just junk by then, assuming they lasted that long. I distinctly remember when 100,000 miles on a car was "Wow!" My vehicle has nearly 100,000 miles on it and it's pretty much running like new. I've had to do nothing with it but change tires and oil. Ms. Sven's Toyota had nearly 200,000 miles on it when she sold it. It still ran great. She just got tired of it and wanted something different.
On the other hand, I've mentioned it here before but an old friend of mine was in the furniture business for many decades (he just died a few months ago). He said that people just don't want quality furniture that lasts for a lifetime (and longer) anymore. They want stuff they can use until they get tired of the look and so they can just toss it and get something shiney and new. I've got some really nice hand-crafted furniture that was made locally here. It'll last (figuratively) forever. Because it's not mass produced (and not made in China) and because it takes a lot of labor hours to craft it, it's expensive. But, it'll last.
i don't think people fixing stuff and saving things makes you materialistic by the definition of the word as we know it.
materialistic to me is when fixing it simply isn't an option because there's a sleeker or newer one out and "everyone else is getting one so i have to have one too!"
@sven: part of the problem with the throwaway culture is that people have been propagandized into believing they can't do anything themselves and to an certain extent extent they're right. you can't fix your car, microwave, computer, stereo, etc yourself anymore because it requires technical knowledge in a very specialized area. And the goal of a capitalist economy is that everything should be a product or service someone can charge money for. look at the explosion in processed food.
Now instead of making a tasty grilled cheese sandwich, you can just buy some really bad microwavable ones at 50X the price for saving an extra two minutes on the preperation. because "time IS money!"
Are we wealther than 2007? No. But, are we wealthier than people were in, say, the 1950s (or earlier)? Yes.
There was an interesting piece in Slate.com today on this subject.
I've been making my way through my grandmother's diaries, which she started in the early 1930s and continued until she died in 1972. Christ, the life she describes is much harder than it is today. She gathered fat to make candles, she cooked on a cast-iron stove. The amount of time that she and my grandpa had to expend on everyday-living chores were pretty astounding. Today? We've got vacations. We can travel. We've got microwave ovens. We can shop on the Internet. Houses that can be quickly heated without having to cut down trees for wood. The list is endless.
People living in the last few decades in places like Canada and the USA are the richest humans that have ever lived.
Actually, there are plenty of cars around from the 60's that if they didn't get rusted are very cheap to fixup. Not so easy these days. All the parts were interchangeable.
Gah, did you have to go there and mention "Made in China"? I have
plentymost "Made in China"(I don't make much money) things that are great. Is this the theme tonight?But I agree about the "quick fix". I survive alot on hand me downs of great quality.
Perhaps, Sven, you could offer me an explanation of this cultural phenomenom?
I think it's a cultural shift fueled by mass entertainment media (TV and film) -- "Wow, did you see that suit Cary Grant was wearing?" -- with captialists standing at the ready to supply people with stuff they want. It wasn't that long ago when all that people saw where the things their immediate neighbors had in their farming communities. Now, they see everything...and they want it. Their favorite basketball star wears X shoes -- "I want X shoes, too!! By contrast, I listened to the Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew talk about playing in his first major league baseball game in 1954. He said it was the first professional baseball game he'd ever seen. He meant that literally: He not only hadn't seen an MLB game live -- he'd never even seen a game on TV!
Thanks, but what does that have to do with it? It doesn't explain anything. It explains how limited our technology was back then.
I agree with the "we want it" mantra. Ugly times. So, can you come up with anything more prescient, Sven?
I've dealt with old cars and old TV, what's next?
The author of the article from MR would offer an explanation involving the trillion dollar / year marketing and advertising industry that now determines what is produced rather than the other way around. It's the inherent waste of capitalism, it's getting worse, and the remedy is socialism. period.
We have a throw away culture because our captains of industry have for the last three decades committed themselves to planned obsolescence. Why make and sell someone a coffee grinder that will last them 25 years when you can sell them one that will last 3 years or so. I have had plenty of appliances that I bought decades ago that when I went to replace them the only thing available was plastic junk. What is truly disgusting is that the plastic junk has the brand names of what used to be quality products but the quality has disappeared only the brand name remains.
I try to buy good quality items made locally but finding them is the problem.
I thought materialism was the view that all reality is found in the physical world.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/materialism
i think good examples of the trend towards manufacturing cheap throw away goods besides cars and tv's are:
cooking utensils and appliances, stereos, clothing, furniture, some bulding materials and construction methods, tools, etc. it extends into almost everything, and i think it has much to do with the popularization of petro based plastics due to their low cost and availability compared to better materials.
knownothing ... I think what you are describing is Physicalism. That's one variety of philosophical materialism. I am personally rather more fond of philosophical materialist views that integrate everything since relativity, quantum theory, and so on. If you look at books like Daniel Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" then you will see that anyone with half a brain, literally, takes a philosophical materialist view of some kind when it comes to consciousness. But investigate for yourself and don't trust me in saying that.
milo ... if you read The Consumer Trap (an excellent read, by the way) then you will discover that marketing and advertising determines production and not the other way around. It's an important development that is characteristic of oligopolistic or monopoly capitalism. new stage, blah blah blah. Check out Sweezy and Baran with their description of "the sales effort" as a means to prolong the life of capitalism.
Dennett is just guessing at what he imagines consciousness to be. He has no proof. The physical brain and mind are a lot more complex thanpreviously thought. There have been scientists and non-scientists proselytizing a long time on what they think consciousness is from scientific, non-scientific and philosophic points of view. And typically they have been materialists. At one time all scientists held the materialist view of reality. That's just not the case anymore.
Perhaps you would like to offer an alternative to the "theory" that the brain is the seat of consciousness.
Dennett makes many more claims, of course, some of which are surely debatable, but the underlying claim of philosophical materialism in regard to where consciousness comes from isn't challenged seriously by anyone I think.
Not to disrespect someone who has probably given it a lot more thought than myself, but I think Dennett's Consciousness Explained Away theory could be a rehash of previous theories based on scientific materialism. 19th century biologist Thomas H. Huxley wrote: "The thoughts to which I am giving utterance and your thoughts regarding them are the expression of molecular exchanges." It all sounds very scientific, doesn't it? There is only one problem with this line of thinking. It's based on a scientific world view that has been completely revolutionized since turn of the last century.
I have a difficult time believing that ikosmos' mind produces thought "like a liver produces bile." And I don't think any of us can be reduced to the idea that we are all capitalist instruments of production. We are more than a mere sum of the parts of our physical brains.
I am sure we all believe in the existence of logic, but this is a meta-physical concept not materialistic.
And some physicists have said in so many words that metaphysics is on the verge of becoming science.
Anybody still hanging on to the view that reality is 100% materialistic is missing a large % of reality.
I don't think that is quite what they mean, but rather that we may one day discover the mechanics behind some things which are currently unproven or unexplained.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
(oops you'll have to cut and paste that link broken by the apostrophe)
And really, if things like mindreading or ghosts can be verified and explained, then there must be mechanics behind them, and they are no longer metaphysical.
On the other hand, taking quantum mechanics, time reversal or other things which occur in subatomic or high energy states and pretending we can apply it to spacetime which supports living things like us is not really valid.
After all, real cats can't be dead and alive at the same time.
And I don't agree with all Clarke's laws. There are no grounds for the belief that all things will some day be possible.
Philosophical materialism is not physicalism. Maybe I should repeat that a few dozen more times for effect?
A philosophical history has followed Holbach, and Huxley for that matter, and some guy named Marx had a few ideas on the subject. Philosophical materialism is no more the "liver secretes bile" view of consciousness as philosophical idealism is the infallible doctrine of the Catholic Church. Life moves on.
I was quoting prominent string theory critic and standard model purist, Lawrence Krauss. There have been quite a few developments in the last ten years and science text books updated more frequently than at any time before.
And I don't doubt there will be scientific explanations for everything some day in the future. As Arthur Clarke said about it, evolution and sufficiently advanced technologies are only matters of time.
Quantum mechanics is spooky, for sure. But QM represents a significant part of modern economies - from MRI machines to plasma tv screens. About 40%.
Right now scientists are estimating 10^500 different realities in the universe. I would rule out nothing. Apparently not only is the human mind more than scientists know, so is the universe stranger than we know.
I'm not talking about real QM, fidel. Of course QM is real, right down to the discovery that certain algae use it to transfer energy, and that some of that energy really is in three places at once.
The thing is that no one calls that magic; it follows physical laws.
I am talking about the trend of misinterpreting QM and applying it to the metaphysical and psychological a la "What the Bleep".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Bleep_Do_We_Know!?
For that matter, even so-called rationalists are on fairly dodgy ground when they take a scientific system like genetics, and try to pretend that psychology and culture follow the same hard rules. Calling it memetics does not make it so.
Marx is still relevant today regardless of scientific world views of the 19th century. I think people like Vernadsky showed that we are now a part of the sum product of the earth and our environment. We are part of the equation. The human mind is at the source of all creativity and "wealth creation" not money or financial engineering or even capitalism. People add value, and man will always be at the centre of man's needs. We have to learn not to destroy our environment as well as ourselves. The next 100 years or so will be the most crucial time in human development apparently. Carl Sagan described how scientists view the parameters of Frank Drake's equation. They weren't very optimistic then about odds for our survival through technological adolescence. The good news is that we are still here. The bad news is that we are making problems for the future. Capitalism must transform itself into something the world's workers will want to take democratic control of in the future. We won't need a large part of the existing economy currently rushing into obsolescence at a frenzied pace.
So what you're saying is that there could be a quantum explanation for the inner workings of the brain and even consciousness. Spooky, yes, but not impossible.
Norbert Wiener said that information is information not matter or energy, and that materialist theory which does not acknowledge this can not survive at the present day. I don't think of my memes as wanting to survive by immitating other's memes. I think it's a ridiculous idea until someone proves otherwise.
No. I'm just saying that it works somehow and some of it we understand and some of it we do not understand yet.
And as for those billions of dimensions, when and if they are actually shown to exist they will not be metaphysical, but physical.
But if scientific materialism is overthrown as some scientists believe is happening today, then it will be thoroughly mind blowing for the people who discover that reality.
Brian Greene thinks that our reality is a 3D hologram projected in this time-space from 2D data in a parallel world. I think that's pretty strange, but Greene points to Hubble evidence of Planck light reflected back to us from outer edges of the universe.
Well to say that someone should demonstrate evidence for something is not the same as scientific materialism.
There are plenty of people who consider things unproven, but do not necessarily reject them as impossible.
And for that matter, you will never get rid of the scientific method, or healthy skepticism. Nor should you, in my opinion.
The notion that people can travel faster that 40 kph and not die may have been mindblowing in the 1840s, and it may have been mind-blowing to some in the 1920s that anything existed outside of our galaxy. But nowadays both are normal scientific fact.
And I am sure if the dimensional revolution that some people are predicting takes place, that will simply become the new normal. But it certainly won't end the requirement that you have to make a case to prove something.
Right, a new normal, I agree. And it may be that Greene is far out there in his thinking. Because reality could be as normal as the views of David Deutsch, one of the more conservative quantum theorists.
It could be that Deutsch's work with Church-Turing thesis is true. And in its strong implication says that "a universal quantum computer", capable of rendering any physically possible environment, actually exists near the end of spacetime in every universe and is maintained by sentient beings with the knowledge required to increase its memory, computing cycles, and energy supply. This follows Frank Tipler's The Physics of Immortality, though he emphasizes the scientific component of Tipler's Omega Point hypothesis, the part justified by Popperian epistemology as implied by the best science. And that's considered one of the more conservative views of quantum theory. From Deutsch's POV, there are maybe only 10 dimensions and perhaps only 17 or so parallel universes. Or perhaps, he says, only one universe but still with sentient beings maintaining things in general. And Deutsch is an atheist.
Actually If I were to guess where that revolution might come from I'd recommend keeping your eye on the large hadron collider. Either it will find something or it will not, and if it does not we will probably be wandering in the wilderness for some time to come.