Rejecting materialism is humanities only hope

It all stems from money my friend. Time=money you want a resource be it wood for building or wood for burning,food for eating or seeds for planting you need time to acquire those things aswell as the risks that come with the self acquisition.

Money can circumvent the time required to acquire.
Nothing wrong with materialism we all can't sit around naked,outside,hugging one another and get very far with out resources natural or otherwise. The problem is limited resource forces us to compete against one another.

If we ever truly want to be free we need unlimited resources for everyone all the time and sadly I don't see that happening.

Unless we master unlimited energy production some how and get out there in space for its a wealth of resource.

The world is very dog eat dog and it's a sad reality.

I do agree with most of this thread however interms of the average person always wanting more,bigger,faster everything and how that's damaging to not only themselves but others.

I am content with myself and what I have I do not strive to be the fastest,smartest or most valuable. I simply want to do what I like to do and I do that. I play board games with friends,drink and go out on the town, hang out with the wife and my 3 pugs and life goes on pay check to pay check.

I realized I may have rambled on a bit. Not sure if I made any points at all really...it's my birthday cut me some slack!! Quarter century old


Ramblings over!



a reply to: onequestion

Rejecting materialism is a great way to improve yourself. Challenge yourself to be happier with less. i will eat a cucumber while others eat grapes. The cucumber can actually be better than the grape if one uses such as leverage to acquire a more personally meaningful resource. i'm not sure if i think humanity needs hope though, everything seems to be growing well enough.

a reply to: Ghost147

I think your point is well taken.

From my point of view both Materialism and Capitalism (together with Marxism and its reactionary variants) are the ashes and dust of modern Western thinking beginning with the so-called 'Englightenment'.

There is only one possible way for that change to happen and that is "to be the change" sounds stupid. But that is the only step in the right direction. But if you expect everyone else to change you are not being the change. You are expecting the change. If you are dissapointed which you will be, your still expecting. Focus on being, materialism is focused on getting and doing, not on being. Many people do not understand being, because they are holding or settled in another form of conciousness. All of our problems as a race or the majority of them stem from the mind and the acts that we get involved in because of the mind set we followed at some point. The best key to be practical is everything must be dealt with on a one to one level. Not a pyramid system! Neither to perpetuate a pyramid system or even form part of any system conciously .

a reply to: [post=20326971]onequestion[/po

Humanities only hope is to invent Star Trek style replicators & I mean asap.

3D printing may save us, if its development accelerates fast enough.

a reply to: onequestion

While only 85 people control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together how can we even stand a chance of rejecting or retarding our materialistic nature?

Truth is its not materialism that's the problem regarding the greater percentage of people on the planet. The problem is the distribution of power and wealth amungst our respective populations.

Screw all that

"Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint.
Give me two and they'll fall in love.
Give me three and they'll invent 'society'.
Give me four and they'll build a pyramid.
Give me five and they'll make one an outcast.
Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice.
Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare.

Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
Steven King

There is no reforming the human race. It is what is and nothing is going to change it. I've read my history and I've seen what is happening in this world for the half century I've been here, It's not just western society either, it's people who form societies in general. Your race, your ideologies, your religious preference........nothing is productive if it's a man made construct for the "benefit" of a society....it doesn't matter. It's all useless busy work that seems to make us reach for the lowest common denominator, call it evolution of the species and run with it. Not seeing that what we perceive as good and necessary things are what slowly destroys us. We're earthbound misfits. The whole lot of us.

That's why I'm voting Trump. If you have to live in quicksand you may as well have some laughs on the way down.



Enjoy yourself while you're here people, I know I am.....harm none and don't take anything too seriously. Otherwise you'll end up writing a post like the one right above this sentence.

Actually I don't think it's all that bad with materialism. Sure it could be a lot better, we could have had it all in fact in theory at least. On a long term it might be something good, materialism wins over spiritualism, humanity will go further into the dense realm as some call it and that might even be necessary to fully research matter. Because a scientist without religion might be unscrupulous in researching, nothing is 'holy' or assumed to be known so no one would research it. Then all the old religions will be gone some day and it will be nothing more than a faint memory. But then some individual will reinvent it all only better because the times will be different. It might be the spiritual will surface because of some invention that has to do with the mind. Point being for something new and improved to emerge, the old has to be gone first for some human to reach enlightenment without all the previous conceptions.

I likes it! Also feel prob the same way you do, but I think we are in the path to that....to an extent, I'd say, media focuses too much on the BS they want us to think is going on. We have great hoomans among us...thing is I think, they are slowly working in the 'shadows' per say....
like the big bad guys did? Just my 2 cents....our tech will either erase all this bs or just erase us along the way (sometimes i do kinda imagine this....giggidy....)
Times are changing rather almost too quick? Doesn't it 'feel' like we just keep upgrading everything rather quickly?
People are waking up, but also does feel like we are digging our hole deeper with the mass sheeps asleep...
anyways, energy flows through us all....

a reply to: onequestion

a reply to: onequestion

In the early days of humanity, people had to cover each other's backs and work together, at least somewhat, or potentially NOBODY survived.

Those days are gone, with artificial barriers (TV, Media, Internet, Corporate Cubicles, 100,000 religious splinter cults, Economic gentrification, etc. etc. ) keeping people from feeling a connection with each other.

If the feeling is "nobody has my back" so I must be "manic" to "make sure my family gets theirs".. then there is no hope of letting go of the fear and working together.

I'm not speaking about socialism or communism.

I don't claim to have an instant solution either.

But things are definitely different now, than when humans were 'weak' and forced to work together to survive, rather than made 'artificially strong" with technology; so no need to "work together to survive".

But that technological base is a temporary illusion.. that may not last (peak oil - no working fusion; loss of easily obtainable rare earths which make advanced tech possible).

Technology has been like a 4000 year-old lottery ticket --- but the money has nearly been spent.

Then we are back to being 'humans' - but fat and maladjusted humans, that are no longer "needed" due to automation and a hoarding of resources by the "1 %".

It's a tough situation to be in.

Kev

a reply to: Peacetime

"Enjoy yourself while you're here people, I know I am.....harm none and don't take anything too seriously. Otherwise you'll end up writing a post like the one right above this sentence."

Dont see how enjoying ones self has anything to do with my post. No point in closing our eyes with regards to whats transpiring outside our windows and the poverty and injustice experienced all over the globe.

And a vote for Trump might just turn out to do plenty of harm. Especially if he get his wish regarding building big walls along the southern border and manages to ban and alienate people of the Muslim faith from entering into the USA.

Everything we need has been available to us as of what....2000's? Maybe even sooner? I don't know, but I do know that we have a certain group of people working towards this....and have been for a while....Mr Fresco for example...what a brilliant and beautiful hooman
Def tough times, but also great times to be alife to see it all unfold right before us

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

originally posted by: eldemie
Everything we need has been available to us as of what....2000's? Maybe even sooner? I don't know, but I do know that we have a certain group of people working towards this....and have been for a while....Mr Fresco for example...what a brilliant and beautiful hooman

Def tough times, but also great times to be alife to see it all unfold right before us

a reply to: KellyPrettyBear

Well the "Matrix" took place at the exact same moment in history.
At the "peak" before the "fall".
So yep, exciting .. at the expense of the whole world.

Kev

"The entire money structured and materialistic oriented society is a false society, our society will go down as the lowest development of man, we have the brains, the know-how and feasibility to create an entirely new civilization"-Jacque Fresco

originally posted by: Bluntone22
Yes yes,
Cars and iPhones are the reason people treat each other horrible.
The world was a peachy eutopia before material things.

The world has never been a Eutopia. Not whilst man has lived here.

Right. Let's all just pack our bags with clothes and food. Leave in to the woods and start afresh.

I'm willing to be a pioneer.

...

I know I have been feeling a growing need to get rid of much of my "stuff" that weighs me down, for about a year now.
As it grew, I also developed a problem with asthma, which sort of feels related - a manifestation of how I feel I am being drowned or choked to death by it all.

I actually had a moment of fantasizing about our home and everything in it burning down the other day!

I know I am not alone, as there is an obvious movement in this direction, over here in Europe as well as elsewhere.
My kid was ranting the other day about how he wants to get rid of money altogether and have everyone just trade with those close to them.

I see articles like this lately -
usawatchdog.com...

Is this happening because of this growing anti-materialism, or something else??

originally posted by: Athetos
It all stems from money my friend. Time=money you want a resource be it wood for building or wood for burning,food for eating or seeds for planting you need time to acquire those things aswell as the risks that come with the self acquisition.

Money can circumvent the time required to acquire.
Nothing wrong with materialism we all can't sit around naked,outside,hugging one another and get very far with out resources natural or otherwise. The problem is limited resource forces us to compete against one another.

If we ever truly want to be free we need unlimited resources for everyone all the time and sadly I don't see that happening.

Unless we master unlimited energy production some how and get out there in space for its a wealth of resource.

The world is very dog eat dog and it's a sad reality.

I do agree with most of this thread however interms of the average person always wanting more,bigger,faster everything and how that's damaging to not only themselves but others.

I am content with myself and what I have I do not strive to be the fastest,smartest or most valuable. I simply want to do what I like to do and I do that. I play board games with friends,drink and go out on the town, hang out with the wife and my 3 pugs and life goes on pay check to pay check.

I realized I may have rambled on a bit. Not sure if I made any points at all really...it's my birthday cut me some slack!! Quarter century old


Ramblings over!



a reply to: onequestion

Ya I think I agree mostly, especially with the first part.

The second part, well, materialism only becomes sour when people become sour. When they go from achievement and accomplishment to languishing or complacency. Is like that with sex, drugs, food, etc. Those things are fine when you're a balanced person. But if you lose the ball, you become fat and/or unbalanced and a shell of your former self. Instead of a list of accolades and people who like you because you actually mean something, you instead become shallow and sheltered and inferior.

That's how I see it. Greed doesn't kill on its own, failure to commit to meaningful goals and actions does.

I'll go ahead and link these:
www.globalpost.com - Rich people more unethical, likely to cheat and steal, study finds ...

The above article suggests rich people aren't just enterprising work horses, they're also possibly cheaters or otherwise exploitive.

But we all have greed:
www.livescience.com - Mere Thought of Money Makes People Selfish...

Here's an interesting take on whether selfishness is favored or disfavored by evolution--stemming from recent research:
www.theguardian.com - Evolution will punish the selfish? It's not as simple as that ...

None of these experiments are conducted in the wild. They are all computer simulations. This is another reason to be slightly sceptical of all these grand results – it's possible that when the pretty mathematics are fitted to the ugly world, they will break. But that's true of pretty much all the kind of science that makes news. There's nothing special to biology about it.

Also keep in mind my grandpa was (i think) 99 when I asked him what was the biggest problem? He said greed. My grandpa got greedy sometimes and liked alcohol, but he worked a lot too. He always kept busy. He would talk on and on about the "rich fat cats" tooling the system. Like the Rochschilds. He said they'd buy when everybody was in the dirt. Generations of that has made certain families rich. They play the system well.

originally posted by: Peacetime...........
There is no reforming the human race. It is what is and nothing is going to change it. I've read my history and I've seen what is happening in this world for the half century I've been here, It's not just western society either, it's people who form societies in general. Your race, your ideologies, your religious preference........nothing is productive if it's a man made construct for the "benefit" of a society....it doesn't matter. It's all useless busy work that seems to make us reach for the lowest common denominator, call it evolution of the species and run with it. Not seeing that what we perceive as good and necessary things are what slowly destroys us. We're earthbound misfits. The whole lot of us.
............

I wrote something, trying to understand what you wrote, but now I've deleted it. Why? Because I can't make out exactly what you said. My mind is still throwing error interrupts. I will have to digest this.

A vague thing blew through and made me google this:
en.wikipedia.org - Objectivism (Ayn Rand)...

originally posted by: onequestion
Hello. My philosophical input has been waning as of late so I decided to make a contribution.

If humanity would like to begin moving in a better direction as an entire species than we need to begin rejecting materialism and mainstream culture and get back to thinking about things that really matter like each other.

I personally believe that if we don't do that we are doomed to experience our own extinction as an inevitable probability.

We need to see the togetherness that binds us on a fundamental level and begin to live the experience of understanding that everything is one giant cosmic being living in everything everywhere.

That's the true future.

Instead of running away from the material world, wouldn't it be better to appreciate it, and not waste it as an opportunity to use it as the tool it is. A tool for refining that which each of us calls "I"?

If I reject the material, and only embrace the non-physical, that would be like trying to have only a 1-sided coin, or a wave that only crests but never troughs. The physical and non physical worlds meet in our minds, at our unique perspective. And that perspective is vital to the evolution of the universe as a whole.

So I don't reject material, I appreciate it.