Reflections: Materialism
Have you noticed an abundance of storage facilities in your neighborhood? We have accumulated to the point of overstuffing our homes so we now have to have additional floor space for the housing of our possessions, until such time as they are deemed ready to be transported to our over filled landfills, so that we can then continue on in our relentless pursuit of more. Maybe the crass materialism in our postmodern, western society is simply the results of a glitch in our hunter/gatherer evolvement and it will eventually right itself. Maybe, or maybe not, but in the meantime we can use our newest gadgetry as a source of distraction so that we aren’t completely overwhelmed with the sense of choking claustrophobia caused by the ever growing heaps of junk which surround us.
The above paragraph speaks more to the problems of materialism than materialism itself. But if we are to correct the problems we must try to understand the cause. In considering materialism from the standpoint of cause and effect, I think we should first understand that while we can’t completely separate the system of thought (or lifestyle) known as materialism from material itself (matter), we do need to distinguish between the two. What I mean to say is that it would be easy, but wrong to think of matter as the cause of materialism. It does seem to be a mistake common to the history of thought. Even as far back as the Greek philosophers we find a metaphysical tension being drawn between the physical realm and the world of thought; with matter often being seen as an inherently negative thing which must be controlled or made subservient to man’s mental realm. Isn’t this line of flawed reasoning understandable though? While we can argue about the constraints or transcendence of what man perceives of as his spirit or soul, there is no debate about the effects of time on that which is physical. We might intuitively suppose that our spirit, soul or thoughts will stretch on into uninterrupted infinity, but we know as an empirically proven fact that the vessel which houses them is as finite as the dust it is destined to return to. Hence the futile effort to tie the corruptible finite (matter) together with the incorruptible infinite. The search for the quintessential. The elusive fifth element which would harmonize and balance the four basic elements of the physical realm. The logos if you will? And so, just as could be expected philosophy reaches an epistemological wall with time
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