What Next?
Posted on 16. Oct, 2009 by Ruda in Society
Photo by ShawnCampbell
The most successful ideology to spread across the world in the past century is consumerism. While so many people argue about political ideologies and which ones are more successful, consumerism seems to have slipped by unnoticed since it can thrive in almost any political system. Basically, it is the idea that a person’s happiness is directly connected to the amount of material possessions they amass.
To think that buying things is what will make us happy seems downright silly. Sure materials can give you temporary pleasure or even long-lasting pleasure, but to equate this pleasure with happiness is wrong. Most of the time, the pleasure gotten from buying things is not even a result of the intrinsic value of the object, it is a result of how it satisfies our egos. The demand for luxury products is in large part driven by the need for people to feel superior to others. The Lexus is better than the Toyota, the $2 million house vs. the $1 million house. What do extra bedrooms have to do with our happiness? Will I not be able to achieve contentment in my life if I don’t have leather seats in my car?
This idea can cause us to run blindly toward the objects we desire without paying attention to what we are doing to get them. People end up working jobs that they don’t like so that they can pay for things they don’t need. College students are studying subjects that will make them the most money so that they can get the best house and car. If a person’s life is spent doing things without passion just to obtain these goods, in the end, life will have been a complete waste. The happiness comes in the way we live every second of it, not just in the moments where we finally are able to buy that new flat screen. We end up suffering to achieve these ends.
Every time a goal is met and a purchase is made, the pleasure dissipates quickly. The new suit will not bring the same excitement everyday. So then you have to find something else to desire, to work toward, to get the next high from. With this ideology, we end up living from object to object, never realizing why it never lasts each time. The idea of a life lived in a futile pursuit is horrifying, yet people are not horrified at themselves. Desire and pleasure should not be confused with happiness, that is the first mistake. Now, even the younger generations are being programmed to operate this way, along with other cultures who had escaped this thinking before. There’s a reason why there is starting to be a shift in thinking toward Eastern philosophy in the United States. Some are realizing that materials are not the source of happiness. But all of this starts with questioning. We must constantly question our motives and examine our definitions. It is only with constant oversight that we start to shift our own minds.
Hello! I suppose you couldn't resist trying to catch a glimpse of the person writing all this nonsense. If you want to learn more about me, check out the "About Me" page. Self-explanatory I guess.
Alex
Oct 17th, 2009
Hello,
I am responding to this post because well… I hear the same thing come out of me. I’m not going to say I agree or disagree because it doesn’t matter. But perhaps we can communicate with each other and realize things together.
First off I must say I’m not really a learned person. I went to college and read tons of books but they never really stick in my head that I know of. I always seem to pick up an old book and have totally forgotten what the book was about. With that I must confess I probably can’t communicate the terms like pleasure/happiness/Eastern/Possessions very well.
I don’t think its silly to think that buying things make us happy. I know you’re being serious in your comments, but at the same time you’re trivializing what you, me, and the rest of the humans on this planet go through. By doing that don’t you and me disconnect ourselves from them? I learned this the hard way with my parents. Nothing major happened but I started to see myself as being separate from them. It was only when I looked at them with me in the picture that I realized I was part of the problem.
For some of us its hard to relate to certain people; because of maybe luck, conditioning, whatever. You or I can’t imagine why someone would want to have a 5 bedroom house when there’s only two of them. But I’m not going to pretend I don’t like “things”. I could live without them, but some things I just enjoy. I enjoy driving cars, cooking food, making ice cream. Some people say thats waste or ruining the environment, or even that I’m being unhealthy. They may be right, but the only thing I know is that my motivations for doing those few things I love are pure. Some of them can be damaging to me or nature. But if you take those things away from me what will I do? Who knows what people would do?
There’s obviously some psychological problems humans have. I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to put a term on it. There’s far too many words being used whether they are desire, fear, happiness, sunyata, samadhi. They obviously have no real meaning because if they did it wouldn’t be so silly and the whole world would live “happily”.
I better stop here I’ve written too much.
Please do write me back. Don’t take anything I’ve written with offense, if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense then forgive me. I don’t think I have much patience to sit and write my exact thoughts with much cohension.
Good night.
Alex
Ruda
Oct 17th, 2009
Hi Alex,
First, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to write out a well thought out response and create discussion, this is exactly why I started writing here in the first place. I also don’t think whether you are learned or not has a bearing on the importance of your opinion. When I called this viewpoint silly, it was somewhat my intent to call attention to the trivial nature of this pursuit, at least in my view. I’m inclined to believe that there is more to explore in ourselves than there is to buy. I’m not saying people shouldn’t like anything or that I don’t like anything. It’s that things shouldn’t be the only pursuit. You said you like driving cars, and cooking food, and I see how your love of those things could be pure. But there are many of us that desire cars and expensive appliances not because of our love for what they give us but because of what they make us look like.
This drive to amass more and more is something that was a part of me as well until recently so it is not something I am using to separate myself from other people. You asked what you or anyone else would do without these things, but I think holding on to this because we fear what else we could do is not valid. That’s how progress works, we have to move from one thing to the next. We can only know what else we would do once we let this thing go.
I agree with you that there seem to be problems that all humans have, but using these different words is not intended to solve them. I’m not surprised if they don’t mean anything to you, that’s the nature of words, it’s all subjective. But the words are not in control of making the world “happy” its what’s behind them, in our minds. We have to resort to the inefficiency of words to communicate with each other but it’s all we have for now.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Ruda