Materialism and Spirituality
A longtime friend emails the following. I’d appreciate any comments: Billy, Greg, JTK, John V, and anyone else.
The market economy is shaped upon a material template, in which every individual is a particle interacting with other particles out of self-interest, i.e. a trader. Here the central operating principle is me vs. you, i.e. competition. There are several philosophies that enable this natural system. Capitalism grants individuals property rights, thereby empowering them to participate in the system; the free market allows traders to interact freely with one another; market values encourage participation.
This economy is only one side of our social reality, however. It is the external, productive, material side, and no more. The other side of society is the internal, spiritual side, the culture. This is a very different template, in which the individual is not a self-contained, material particle, but part of a larger whole, us. The central operating principle of this side is moral, not productive. Instead of "productive becoming" (i.e. material progress) it is "good being." This Good expresses itself in a variety of values, be they cultural, familial, aesthetic, institutional, or social. Here the individual is not acting as a trader, but as a person. It is this higher sensibility that dampens the aggression of pure competition, and lifts us above the beast. There is a lot more to being human than producing, trading, and consuming.
Society is a balance of these two distinct and essential sides, the productive economy and the moral culture. They should not be confused. For either to be healthy, the good must control the productive, the spiritual the material, the internal the external, the moral the amoral, the human the animal. As long as this is the case, the result cannot be anything but good. If not, the individual and the society become unbalanced and unhealthy. The Market rules, and amorality spreads. Society becomes increasingly defined by quantity, the measure of the material world, and of the market price. Democracy, education, and religion are corrupted. The social system becomes senseless and chaotic. Life loses its meaning, purpose, and seriousness, becoming a kind of joke.
The primary cause of this imbalance is an overemphasis on quantitative reasoning, which sets the entire material assembly line in motion. Society is hammered upon the material template, where we are all particles, in order to make it more economically efficient. Materialism follows. Materialism rests on the notion that society only has one side–the external, material side–and hence, that all is economics, that free market capitalism defines all reality, and that the Market is God. The physical universe becomes the Universe itself. A deadly veil falls, and fully half of reality is lost. Materialism thus causes the deepest of all possible damage. It is the death of the soul.
The defense against materialism is education in all spheres: the family, the school, the religion, the society at large. However, such efforts are destined to fail if not rooted in an understanding of reality itself, which gives them legitimacy. The problem we are facing today is thus primarily metaphysical. We have cut ourselves off from the truth.
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Free The Animal is an eclectic writing project about everything since November 2003. 23 years, 5,500 posts, 5 million words.
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I really like this. I really like your entire site. You seem to have a good thing going in your life.
I just wrote the following as I was inspired by that email.
What is Life?
Good stuff, except maybe in
"The defense against materialism is education in all spheres: the family, the school, the religion, the society at large."
I would replace "religion" with "rational moral code." Why? Because religion is far too easily subverted by the materialist impulses of the free market. Religion relies on indoctrinating individuals with fundamentally irrationalist, non-empirical beliefs, so in terms of morality, it's really a house of cards. If one can convince oneself and others that a particular materialist endeavor is "the will of God" or "part of God's plan" or at least "a prerequesite for entry into Heaven," then the moral "logical gateways" of the religious belief system can be twisted to recommend a course of action that's at least highly divergent from, if not antithetical to, the principles on which the religion is ostensibly based (see: indulgences, divine right monarchies, etc).
If, on the other hand, individuals are taught a universal moral code that's based on a lot of those same principles, without the silly fairy-tale mythology, then the moral belief system is far less corruptible. In that case, individuals make moral decisions based on logic and reasoning rather than "because Jesus says so." Obviously there would still be aberrations, but much more at the individual rather than aggregate level. In the absence of religious motivation, it would be much harder for Osama bin Laden to convince his followers to crash planes into buildings merely by constructing a logical case for such an action.
Richard, great blog! At last I find one with some meaty philosophy in it. How refreshing.
I'm going to make a few comments on this posting, since, I see, it preceeds the next, and then come back later and get into your other stuff.
On whole, I liked the content of the email. How could I not? It's very well thought out, obviously not only from a philosophical point of view but also from experience. And very nicely written. Of course in anything that encompasses so much of reality, any reader will find things to object to. As did the above commenter.
I don't object as much as he does to the teaching of religion, as opposed to general morality, because I think it's fairly obvious that most people find something in their religions that they want and possibly need that is not related to morality. For instance, they need something to do with the afterlife, and with not being alone in the world, and with the need for a higher power they can bow to, and so on. People will find these whether you want them to or not. It's just a nice coincidence that most religions also dwell on morality.
My objection is more to the idea of morality itself, as stated thus: "The central operating principle of this side is moral, not productive." The implication is that there are only two motivations in life: the economic and the moral. What a narrow, restricted view of the world! Definitely the moral is one aspect of the non-economic world. But only one. To assume that it is the only thing that motivates us aside from materialism is pretty strange. In fact, I think that the moral aspect is a minor one. For starters, I would drop into the picture all the religious wants that I described above. And then add all our instinctive desires and motivations: like the territorial, the sexual, the jealous, to name a few, but let's not forget possibly the instinctive drive we have (at least us men) which probably affects society more than any other, and which far overshadows morality: the great pecking order of life – the need to set up hierarchies, and the resulting zillions of them we live in and that many of us simply cannot see beyond. Okay, so we have religious, and instinctive motivations. What else? Well, nothing is popping into mind at the moment, but I think I've made my point.
Nevertheless, even considering the whole human non-economic world is limited to the minor moral aspect in the email, I nevertheless pretty much agree with the email's conclusions. The main ideas are fairly obviously correct.
I see that you don't have too much happening here in terms of feedback here, Richard – not nearly as much as you deserve. I, on the other hand, on my blog, regularly get great comment discussions going, from 30 to 60 comments long, most pretty deep and involved. You're welcome to come and join in the fray. If you do, I can guarantee some of the regulars at my blog will come to yours and get something going here too. You certainly deserve it. All you need is a few people to get the ball rolling. Anyway, you might enjoy mine as well. Right now, we have probably the best discussion yet going there, on the subject of existential angst.
Stan, thanks for the kind words. I address the fact that people pursue myriad values for myriad reasons in my post subsequent to this one.