this sounds good.......
In California lore there is the story of a 1940s gang that operated profitably on the sun-blistered highway stretching between Lost Angeles and Las Vegas. The gang would steal orange cones from a street maintenance crew and distribute them in a gentle curve across the highway in the middle of the desert. Travelers driving to Las Vegas were detoured onto a dirt track that eventually petered out in dust and greasewood, and there they would be ambushed and robbed by four men with machine guns and sent reeling back to Los Angeles in their underwear.
There are many ways to get detoured off the high path of life. Bad investments, bad marriages, the wrong occupation will all do the trick, and they all begin with legitimate-looking diversions. Whole societies can get detoured, trapped into crippling wars or imprisoned within their own borders by charismatic dictators. All start as sensible-looking ventures and on the way, nobody guesses destiny.
Our exorbitant materialism is a loss of the way. We did not come to a point of ownership-obsession overnight, nor did it descend one day like a sun-darkening cloud of locusts; it is a coloring that has been gathering slowly within. In 1966, when college freshmen were surveyed about what they were going to do with their lives, 44 percent said it was important or essential to become well off financially, but by 1996 that had risen to 73 percent. Conversely, back in 1966 a full 83 percent said it was important to develop a philosophy of life, but by1996 that had dropped to 42 percent [1]. On a graph, the ascending line crosses the declining line in a stark X; it is clear one motivation has displaced the other. Nowadays, it is rare to hear about a philosophy of life; money and property have become our main attention. We believe we are what we own.
Where is materialism taking us? Does money make us happy? Actually, Jeremy Bentham led us astray when he stated that money is the most accurate measure of pleasure. Recently a collection of studies has revealed that in fact rich people are not happier, and that adding wealth to your life does not increase your sense of well being (unless you live below the poverty line) [2]. Moreover rich nations are not always healthier: the recent discovery is that people in egalitarian nations live longer than people in richer nations that are hierarchical [3]. But people think money will make them happier, and that’s what motivates them.
Psychological studies show that it is actually companionship and family that make people happier. So we are immersed in both sides. In practice, money corrupts friendship and money problems are second only to infidelity as a cause of divorce [4]. Observe, says Yale’s Robert Lane, a simultaneous national growth of wealth and depression. In The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, he puts it this way: there is “a titanic conflict between the oldest human institution, and the newest, the market” [5]. Statistics bear him out. We are richer than ever, and huge numbers are using prescription antidepressants. Severe depression is 10 times more prevalent that it was 50 years ago, and suicide is the third highest cause of death in young people.
The triumphant free market does not care. Lane says it is Darwinian, indifferent, a winnowing process, amoral, with no concern for what happens to persons.
cont.....
Materialism, a deepening shadow
