Is That Other S Is Materialistic They Can Be Bought Again
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In January 1848, James Marshall was building a sawmill by a river nigh present day Sacramento when he establish a piece of glowing metal on the flooring, which turned out to be gold. Once rumours of the discovery had spread inside a few weeks, tens of thousands of people were flocking to the area, struck past "gold fever."
Ships were abandoned all over the California coast, businesses airtight down, and whole towns became deserted. In a fiddling over a year, San Francisco grew from a shanty town of 79 buildings to a city of tens of thousands. Over the side by side few years, at to the lowest degree 300,000 gold-seekers came to California.
The result on the Native Americans of California was catastrophic. They were driven off their traditional hunting and gathering grounds, and their rivers were polluted by gravel, silt, and toxic chemicals from the new mines. Some Indian groups used strength to try to protect their lands, but were massacred past the miners. Those who weren't killed past the miners slowly starved to expiry, or died from diseases passed on by the immigrants. Others were kept as slaves, while attractive immature women were carried off to be sold. As a upshot, the Californian Native American population brutal from around 150,000 in 1845 to 30,000 in 1870.
This savage materialism was typical of European immigrants' attitude to the "New World" of America. They saw it as a treasure-house of resource to ransack, and saw the native population every bit an inconvenient obstacle to exist eradicated.
Some tribes were and so confused by the colonists' insatiable want for gold that they believed that the metallic must exist a kind of deity with supernatural powers. Why else would they go to such lengths to become concord of it? When an Indian chief in Cuba learned that Spanish sailors were nigh to assail his island, he started to pray to a chest total of gilded, appealing to the "gold spirit" which he believed they worshipped. But the gold spirit didn't show him any mercy — the sailors invaded the island, captured the chief, and burned him alive.
Modern Materialism
In some ways, the gold diggers' rampant materialism was understandable, since they were living at a time of not bad poverty, and for many of them golden digging seemed to offer an escape from starvation. Merely virtually of us in the western, industrialized earth don't have that excuse. Our appetite for wealth and cloth appurtenances isn't driven past hardship, but by our own inner discontent. We're convinced that we tin buy our way to happiness, that wealth is the path to permanent fulfillment and well-being. Nosotros still measure success in terms of the quality and cost of the fabric goods we can buy, or in the size of our salaries.
Our mad materialism would be more forgivable if at that place was evidence that material goods and wealth exercise pb to happiness. Simply all the evidence fails to testify this. Written report after report by psychologists has shown that there is no correlation betwixt wealth and happiness. The only exception is in cases of real poverty, when extra income does save suffering and brings security. But once our basic material needs are satisfied, our level of income makes trivial departure to our level of happiness.
Research has shown, for case, that extremely rich people such as billionaires are not significantly happier than people with an average income, and suffer from higher levels of low. Researchers in positive psychology accept concluded that true well-existence does not come up from wealth but from other factors such as proficient relationships, meaningful and challenging jobs or hobbies, and a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves (such equally a religion, a political or social cause, or a sense of mission).
Explanations for Materialism
Many economists and politicians believe that acquisitiveness — the impulse to purchase and possess things — is natural to human being beings. This seems to make sense in terms of Darwin'south theory of evolution: Since natural resource are express, human beings have to compete over them, and attempt to claim as large a function of them as possible.
One of the issues with this theory is that there is actually nothing "natural" virtually the want to accumulate wealth. In fact, this desire would have been disastrous for earlier human beings. For the vast majority of our time on this planet, human beings have lived as hunter-gatherers — small tribes who would normally movement to a different site every few months. As nosotros can encounter from modern hunter-gatherers, this style of life has to be not-materialistic, because people tin't beget to be weighed down with unnecessary appurtenances. Since they moved every few months, unnecessary goods would simply be a hindrance to them, making it more difficult for them to move.
Another theory is that the restlessness and abiding wanting which fuels our materialism is a kind of evolutionary mechanism which keeps us in a country of alertness. (The psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi has suggested this, for example.) Dissatisfaction keeps living beings on the lookout for ways of improving their chances of survival; if they were satisfied they wouldn't exist alert, and other creatures would take the advantage.
But there is no bear witness that other animals live in a state of restless dissatisfaction. On the contrary, many animals seem to very boring and static lives, content to remain within their niche and to follow their instinctive patterns of behaviour. And if this is what drives our materialism, we would probably expect other animals to be avaricious too. But over again, there is no evidence — apart from some nutrient-hoarding for the wintertime months — that other animals share our materialistic impulses. If it was necessary for living beings to be restless and constantly wanting then development would surely have ground to a halt millions of years ago.
In my view, acquisitiveness is all-time understood in psychological terms. Our mad materialism is partly a reaction to inner discontent. As human beings, it's normal for united states to experience an underlying psychological discord, caused past the incessant chattering of our minds, which creates a disturbance inside us and often triggers negative thoughts. Some other source of psychological discord is the strong sense of separateness many of usa feel, the sense of being isolated individuals living in a world which is "out in that location," on the other side of our heads.
We expect to external things to try to alleviate our inner discontent. Materialism certainly can give us a kind of happiness — the temporary thrill of buying something new, and the ego-inflating thrill of owning it afterward. And we utilise this kind of happiness to try to override, or compensate for, the fundamental unhappiness inside us.
In improver, our want for wealth is a reaction to the sense of lack and vulnerability generated past our sense of separation. This generates a desire to makes ourselves more whole, more significant and powerful. Nosotros try to bolster our fragile egos and brand ourselves feel more complete by accumulating wealth and possessions.
Information technology doesn't work, of course — or at least, information technology only works for a very short time. The happiness of buying or owning a new item rarely lasts longer than a couple of days. The sense of ego-inflation generated past wealth or expensive possessions can be more indelible, only it'south very fragile too. It depends on comparing yourself to other people who aren't too off equally you, and evaporates if yous compare yourself to someone who is wealthier than yous. And no matter how much we try to complete or bolster our ego, our inner discontent and incompleteness always re-emerges, generating new desires. No affair how much nosotros get, it'due south never enough. As Buddhism teaches, desires are inexhaustible. The satisfaction of one want simply creates new desires, similar a prison cell multiplying.
The merely real way of alleviating this psychological discord is not by trying to escape information technology, but past trying to heal it. — which will have to exist subject of another web log mail service.http://www.stevenmtaylor.com
Dr. Steve Taylor is a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University, Uk. This article is adapted from his acknowledged book Back to Sanity. www.stevenmtaylor.com
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201203/the-madness-materialism
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