Posted on 9-3-2004

Material Wealth Is Contary To Freedom
Introduced and edited by Alan Marston

Introduction: Money can't buy me love... which is easy to say when you're a Beatle.
For us less wealthy money and material wealth are not something to be ignored.
In the following article the recommendation is not to place all one's
faith in wealth and instead of either of the two extremes of relying on money or
condeming it as the root of all evil, the article recommends a higher consciousness
which accepts the need for material security, but also a strong spirituality
which transcends materialism of any sort.

Ultimately spirituality is the ground of being, not things.

............................

Materialism traps us, unawares, in a world of irrational fears of likely
loss and lurking dangers. It degrades creativity and reduces it to
consumption. The spiritual option is not to renounce modernity and
demonise development, but to transcend the spirit of materialism.

The global village is not partial to any religion, except gain, that's why
the civilisational conflict is not between Christianity and Islam but
between spiritual self-reliance and reliance on material commodities, the
latter being the religion of our globalising world. The conflictual model
of inter-faith relationships that kept religions fighting one another has
enabled materialism - their common enemy - to steal a march upon them,
unawares. Just as racism allows those who represent corporate interests to
enlist their natural opponents, the working class, on their side.

Materialism is much more than affluence and lavish life-styles. No
religion preaches against material success gained the right way, except
Christianity. Nevertheless Christ is the main vehicle of gain in the
globalised religion business. Hindus worship Lakshmi, the goddess of
wealth. The Sikh gurus encouraged hard work, paving the way for the
prosperity of Punjab. The Semitic religions see prosperity as a gift from
God. At the same time, all religions recognise that our attitude to wealth
is crucial to our personality. When affluence is idolised it enslaves the
individual and lures them away from a believable meaning for living.
Materialism, unlike material prosperity, is a quasi-religion, complete
with its own ritual, its own creed, and its counterpart of the
supernatural. Wealth, pursued for its own sake, is the god of materialism,
consumerism is its ritual and technology is its "supernatural". Worldly
success is its dogma. Escalating and interminable pleasure is the highway
to its secular nirvana.

But materialism is a pseudo-religion. Insisting that "matter alone
matters", it brings about the subservience of the human to the non-human.
The industrial culture degraded human beings into cogs in the machine -
alienation. In the globalising world, profit has already superseded people
and the generation of wealth is a goal higher than the promotion of human
welfare. The pathos of the dwindling stature of man, his growing
insignificance and bewilderment, is a recurrent lament in modern
literature. The secular-materialistic dream of a new heaven and a new
earth, on all available evidence, threatens to turn into a nightmare.
Decades ago, the French philosopher Bergson warned that we would be
crushed, not by our failures but by our successes; and our souls could be
smothered under the weight of our achievements. Studies now prove that
materialism breeds despair, anger and irrational outbursts of violence, of
which the infamous "road-rage" is a startling instance, along with a
pandemic of suicide. The advent of prosperity has not translated itself
into happiness. "While there is growing concern over the environmental
effects of materialism and global consumerism," says Shaun Saunders of the
University of Newcastle, Australia, "little attention has been paid to its
psychological effects." Why is the materialistic culture out of sync with
the stature and wellbeing of our species?

Materialism is, by definition, a worldview based on superficiality. The
reason for this is not far to seek. Matter, in a philosophical sense, is
all surface and no depth. We cannot get into the depth of a material
object. A stone, for example, has no inside, strictly speaking. Break a
stone, and we get several stones; we do not reach the "inside" of a stone.
Nor can we access the depth of a stone by drilling into it. Drilling
creates, at best, only an illusion of depth. The deceptions and delusions
of materialism stem from its inevitable superficiality. The surface is a
sphere of vulnerability, insecurity and unfulfillment. That is so because
the surface is governed by the inexorable law of change. Change, for the
sake of change, breeds restlessness, it unsettles. Whatever is on the
surface keeps poorly, it has no stable or settled value. For this reason
material possessions tend to lose their value soon after they are
acquired. As long as it was being struggled for, it was an idea.
Attainment turns this idea into an object; and an object exists no longer
in the depth but on the surface, where the magic evaporates. This
inevitable dissatisfaction with what is attained keeps the mill of
acquisitiveness grinding. It also makes fulfillment elude our grasp.

Superficiality is inhospitable to human stature. Personality is a
depth-phenomenon, which also means that it has a spiritual core: a core of
mystery. It is only from a superficial perspective that a person's worth
can be equated with his possessions. Such an approach perforce brings
about an imbalance between "being" and "having". The more obsessed one
gets with "having", the less capable or keen he gets of "being". This
leads to a situation in which material riches are secured to the neglect
of, even at the expense of, one's inner wealth. In that event, the
wealthier a person gets materially, the poorer he gets humanly. It is a
glaring fact of history that the culture of materialism and its coordinate
of liberal individualism have failed to produce, as Paul Tournier laments,
individuals of stature. When personality is reduced to a materialistic
concept, we get stuffed shirts where we expect great men and women.

The degradation of human worth into "having" and the corresponding erosion
of human dignity together constitute the perverse logic of corruption. The
perpetrators of mega corruption are not driven by the need to meet their
basic needs, they are possessed and driven by the spirit of covetousness,
having equated their worth with their material possessions. Their richness
is a matter of being seen for what they have, of which the craving to hog
the social limelight is an irresistible corollary. Sadly, they realise
only too late that they are poorer for their ill-gotten wealth. The more
they have, the poorer they are and that is so, even if they manage to
evade detection and public infamy. Can a man's affluence avail him, if it
has already cost him his self-respect? The irony is that public respect is
purchased at the cost of self-respect. That is too great a price to pay.
Relationships suffer in a culture of superficiality. The logic of change
operates with equal effectiveness on relationships as on fashions. Both
remain vulnerable to change and are driven by convenience. Since this is
an intuited reality all through, relationships bristle with anxiety and
mistrust from the beginning. Mutual trust can exist only in personal
depth, the depth of total mutual acceptance in love. Mistrust activates
control-orientation, which breeds cruelty and cruelty causes divorce. In
the materialistic view relationships are forged in the persona market,
where the aim is no higher nor deeper than fair exchange - the best deal
for one's persona and negotiation and compromise from then on. All the
values that we cherish - such as love, truth, compassion and justice -
have their roots in the human depth; and they evaporate in a culture of
superficiality. "Is your heart made of muscle or mud?" shot the Principal
Sessions Judge in Chennai at the police officer who handled the arrest of
Mr. M. Karunanidhi. The judge knows that police officers act less
according to deep, personal convictions and more in consonance with the
prevailing political ambience. According to the outlook that now prevails,
a man is a cherished treasure as long as he is ensconced in the seat of
power, but is wholly worthless when out of it. This is the quintessential
logic of materialism. The problem with the police officer is not that his
heart is made of mud; but that he too is animated by the mindset of
materialism. "Heart of mud", incidentally, is an evocative metaphor of the
human predicament in a materialistic culture.

Superficiality is, besides, a domain of compromised freedom. According to
Swami Vivekananda, man is free only in the sphere of the spirit. He can
have the illusion of freedom in the domains of matter and mind. Freedom is
at the root of our humanity. The thirst for freedom cannot be assuaged by
the glitter or comfort of the prison to which we are confined. This is why
mansions of affluence often hold oceans of misery. Downy pillows and plush
mattresses are, somehow, incomplete without sleeping pills. Materialism
traps us, unawares, in a world of possessions hagridden by irrational
fears of likely loss and lurking dangers. It reduces human freedom to the
logic of taking and receiving, and erodes the freedom to give. The freedom
only to receive is, at best, only an illusion of freedom. It degenerates
sooner of later into the compulsion to extort, which makes thieves of
those who can thrive at the expense of others. In all spiritually informed
schools of thought, the basic ingredients of human freedom are
self-control, generosity and compassion.

Finally, materialism degrades creativity to consumption. Creativity, like
personality (as opposed to persona/ego), to which it is organically
related, is a depth phenomenon, as is proved by the mystery that inheres
in it. On the surface there could be suspense, but not mystery. Creativity
is an outward flow. Consumption is a pull in the opposite direction.
Consumption is not merely a dental activity. It is a larger and
comprehensive metaphor of a personality-orientation. Consumption affords
pleasure. But it is only creativity that engenders enduring joy. Pleasure,
in comparison, is superficial and transitory. It breeds a craving to
consume ever-increasing doses in the futile chase after elusive
fulfillment.

Consumerism has powerful psychosocial and pseudo-religious overtones in
materialism. It is the ritual of materialism. In materialistic cultures a
person's social worth is measured wholly by the consumables he can afford.
This includes not only exotic cuisine, expensive wardrobe, and other
catalysts of "social envy", but also pointers like expensive medical
treatment, exclusive education, elite residential locality, and so on. One
familiar pointer to the psychological implications of consumerism is what
has come to be known as "retail therapy". This refers to the false sense
of wellbeing that people derive merely from shopping for the sake of
shopping. When peace returns after a domestic quarrel, for example, the
husband and wife celebrate the occasion by going on a shopping spree that
may include the ritual of 'eating out'. In the process these familial
gladiators side-step the duty to understand each other, which would help
avert the periodic outbreak of domestic dogfights. This creates a
seemingly autonomous cycle comprising tensions, conflict-resolutions,
shopping sprees and further tensions.

A way of life does not become materialistic simply on account of the
increase in its affluence. It does so only when the criteria for judging
realities and options are derived from the materialistic worldview. In
materialistic cultures, even religion is shaped and driven by the logic of
materialism. A pointer in this direction is the fact that people practise
religion - never mind which religion - only with materialistic intentions
and calculations. In general terms, these "religious" motives are either
to persuade God to be partisan to one's own interests or to ward off the
dreaded displeasure of God, lest it proves too costly. If this does not
strike us as "religious corruption" it is because discernment of this kind
is alien to the materialistic mindset. That being the case, one should
expect "religious materialism", if you like, of this sort to abound in
routine self-contradictions. It is not rarely that one comes across, for
instance, gurus and dharmacharyas who pride themselves on their ascetic
credentials chuckling gleefully, nonetheless, over the affluence and clout
of their devotees! Religion has been consumed by materialism, God is good
for business.

The clinching proof that the spirit of materialism is ascendant in a
particular religion is that it prefers to wall in its community, and wall
out all others. Exclusion is the intrinsic logic of materialism.
Hospitality is its counterpart in the culture of spirituality. Matter is
neutral; whereas materialism is loaded with negativity. Matter in
materialism serves as the medium of separation between individuals and
communities. Between the rich and the poor, there is a wall thicker than
the Great Wall of China. Matter, from a spiritual outlook, becomes the
bridge that connects. The task of spirituality is to set free the captives
of "exclusionist" mental prisons and to enable them to reach out in love
and service to a world in need. It is like the mental revolution that
preceded the circumnavigation of the globe. Ferdinand Magellan dared to
embark on his adventure because, unlike his contemporaries, he saw the sea
as something that "connected" the continents. Others assumed that the sea
"separated" the continents! From a spiritual perspective materialism is a
throw-back to the pre-Magellan era in the geography of the soul.
In the domain of politics, materialism excludes compassion from the
culture of governance. When governance is informed by spiritual
sensitivity, it makes eminent sense to address the needs of the
underprivileged as a preferential option. That is because, such a culture,
because it does not equate the worth of a human being with his material
possessions, insists on the worth of the poor and the powerless. From a
materialistic viewpoint, however, have-nots have nothing, including human
worth. Ideological charades apart, therefore, the poor cease to be a
matter of concern to the rulers. The "invisibility of the poor" is a
natural and necessary outcome of it. It was because Gandhiji had a vibrant
spiritual sensitivity that he insisted on the poorest of the poor being
the term of reference for choosing between models and priorities for
development. There is an unmistakable correlation between the denial of
the poor and the rise of corruption in public life. One way or another,
corruption is inevitable in a materialistic way of life.

Materialism has a devastating effect on the idea of work and the culture
of the workplace itself. Work comes to be seen, primarily, as a crucible
of covetousness. Money becomes the ultimate arbiter between people. This
drains work of any social, psychological or spiritual significance. The
worth of work then comes to be seen only in terms of how much it brings
home to the worker, irrespective of the means employed. This makes workers
blind to the prospect of creativity, innovativeness and their own personal
dignity in the approach to work. Work becomes a soulless routine; and the
workplace a barren territory of inevitable boredom, alienation and
frustration. The alienation of the worker from the value and meaning of
work is at the centre, we know, of Marx's concern for the working class,
it is also a key issue in the sociology of work.

It could sound heretical at the present time to be skeptical of the
blessings of materialism. A spiritually informed critique of materialism
does not advocate the renunciation of the fruits of material development.
Spirituality is not religious obscurantism! Nor is spirituality partial to
any model of economic development. The business of spirituality is to
remain vigilant against the assumptions and advocacies in every culture
and every age that misconstrue life and human welfare. The key assumption
in spirituality is the primacy of the human. All the wealth of the world
put together does not surpass the worth of a human being. This is the core
of the spiritual vision because nothing less can ward off the temptation
to subordinate the human to the material accessories of the world.

Materialism, as against material progress, is incompatible with our
spiritual destiny because it makes life subservient to the amenities for
living. The fundamental problem of the modern man, according to Einstein,
is that he gets obsessed with the means to the neglect of the ends. This
cripples the art of living. It makes us improvise solutions without
understanding problems and evolve remedies without diagnosing the
maladies.
The spiritual option is not to renounce modernity or demonise development.
It is, instead, to transcend the spirit of materialism. It is to ensure
that material development remains conducive to the blossoming of the human
spirit. It is to remain vigilant against the danger of losing the needle
of life in the haystack of the material circumstances for living.

Culturally, materialism leads to Philistinism which, according to Matthew
Arnold, makes the heart subservient to the stomach, with all the problems
that arise in its wake. Spiritually, materialism leads to religious
fundamentalism which corrupts the fundamentals of a religion by degrading
them into weapons for defending vested interests. Humanly, materialism
effects an existential dis-equilibrium between matter and spirit, choking
the human under the preponderance of the material. The inner being
experiences this anomaly as depression, despair and life-weariness. The
sickness of materialism is not that there is an over-abundance of material
goods. The poverty of materialism is that in its keenness to fatten the
body it leaves the spirit starved. It is reflected in the foolish
assumption that the hypervitaminosis of the body would, somehow, spill
over and become nourishment for the soul. The mounting agony of the world,
however, roundly condemns the willful blindness of this secular dogma.