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Post by firesword on Sept 11, 2006 21:59:10 GMT -5
I'm doing an essay on Materialism for my English class, so I was wondering if anyone here has any thoughts on the subject.
I am anti, but conflicting views would be as helpful as same sides. I'd really appreciate it!
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Post by shogunassassin on Sept 11, 2006 22:52:49 GMT -5
well, as much as i would like to explain MY point of view, i will spare you (and myself) the details.
however, i googled "materialism" and checked out the wikipedia.com page for it - it's quite extensive. if you already checked that out, there are 5,829,999 other pages that came up from the google search.
if you want to get your hands dirty, check out what Kant has to say.
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Post by rihochan on Sept 12, 2006 5:08:53 GMT -5
I would say that materialism is a mixed blessing at best. For Americans at least, the materialistic mindset gives people a sort of hope that they can somehow make a difference in their own lives by obtaining objects or money. While it is good to have hope, a hope based on a materialistic goal tends to create a higher probability for actions that would be considered 'corrupt' or 'dishonorable'. In this way, even the hope created by a materialistic goal can become a negative force in a person's life.
While I do have more thoughts on the matter, and I could probably ramble on for several pages about it, this sums up my basic thoughts on the subject.
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rafiqi
Ninja
"Hatsumomo..."
Posts: 60
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Post by rafiqi on Sept 12, 2006 13:04:33 GMT -5
Well materialism ? where to start ? Richochan summed it up pretty nicely ^_^. Ironically materialism could be labeled as a variant of spiritualism....Indeed it functions much like a religion, with the kind of mindset it imposes on us.
Materialism is arguably a very basic human instinct. Whether its affect is positive or negative in terms of overall gain (spiritual and pysichal) is very much down to the individual and their own philosophy.
PS- Immanual Kant is God !
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Post by shogunassassin on Sept 13, 2006 1:22:24 GMT -5
wait a minute; do you mean 'materialism' as in the philosophy of matter and motion comprising all we know and don't know? Or 'materialism' as in the pursuit for more and More and MORE!
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Post by Dashing Devil on Sept 16, 2006 10:01:37 GMT -5
Materialism..... mmmm.... let's think. Materialism rules! We dutch aren't greedy at all .... hey! step away from that coin or I'll kill you!
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Post by sinistar on Sept 20, 2006 22:33:54 GMT -5
The minute humans created the idea of greed and money we were doomed. I absolutely hate money because it as a social construct doesn't positively contribute to us at all. The fact is the absolute pursuit of materials even for basic subsistence puts a person on a path to greed. The only way to counteract this is being cognizant of it, which most people aren't. They believe they are following the natural path of our society. When in fact, if most people were left to their own devices they'd only seek enough to be comfortable.
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Post by Beagle on Sept 25, 2006 7:49:25 GMT -5
Actually, currency is a social construct that allowed people to apply a specific value to things AND barter for that exact amount, instead of the older bartering system where you valued something in a relative fashion based on what you needed at the time. Currency allowed for the concept of the market to expand beyond the local scope and to expand to a national scope. At this time, we're still trying to deal with the problems caused by attempting to use this model globally. Without money, people over-hunted, over-grazed, and over-farmed, because that's what made them richer. Back in the old system, you still had an aristocracy that would spend more on clothing in one day than the peasants would spend on food in a whole month.
Currency didn't create greed, fear did. Fear is the driving motivation for much of what we love and much of what we hate. Greed specifically stems from the fear of not having enough. Subsistence farmers would get wiped out by a drought one year, so the next year, the fear of drought drove them to farm more, to provide a buffer against drought and flood. So they farmed more than they needed for fear that they might need it later. Sometimes in the past, the best doctors were in different countries (that's true today) and only the rich have enough money to make it to those doctors. It's not the doctors fault, they are few, they can't be everywhere at the same time and treat everyone. So the poor die of their rarer cancers and the rich live. From the perspective of those you might call greedy, it is a necessity of life to have enough money to do this.
Further, being comfortable is a completely relative term. Many people don't find it comfortable to sit on cloth couches, and prefer leather. Leather couches have varying degrees of quality. If you were to buy a $2 million couch, it would be more comfortable, and last longer, than a $5000 couch. So, which choice would you have people make if they were cognizant of the fact that the pursuit of materials is a path to greed? Some people find it uncomfortable to get lost, so they spend money on the GPS devices in cars. Some people find it uncomfortable to not have enough space in their house to paint, sing, cook, eat, sleep, watch TV, raise their children, build model airplanes, work on their car, etc. Some people find it uncomfortable to love so far away from a major city. Welcome to the rise of the $5 million home.
But NONE of what I'm talking about is GREED, which is separate from MATERIALISM as an ETHIC, which is separate from MATERIALISM as a METAPHYSICS.
Without going into greed, materialism as an ethic is the idea obtaining material possessions is the goal in life. This, in my mind, is clearly false. No serious school of thought actually looks upon materialism as a viable ethics. But that's pure ethical materialism; people don't matter in so far as they are not objects, love doesn't matter in so far as it is not a means to obtaining more from someone else, your own health doesn't matter, etc. And in this regard extreme Ethical Materialism is considered a vice by nearly all cultures.
Metaphysical Materialism, as pointed out by shogunassassin, is the idea that ALL entities in the universe are ultimately based in matter (and since the discovery of EM spectrum, energy). That would mean thoughts are ULTIMATELY material in nature, love is made of matter and energy, if there is a god, it's made out of something, if there is an afterlife, it is a phyiscal place, if there is a soul, it is something material, not ethereal. Metaphysical materialism is an interesting but ultimately empty philosophy, because there is simple no way, a priori, to determine any of its claims truth values. Only through experience can we disprove Metaphysical Materialism, and nothing can ever prove it because simply that we are unaware of a non-material real entity does not mean that it does not exist. Further, simply because we believe we are aware of a non-material real entity (like our sensory experience of the color red) does not mean that some day we may find it to be material (however unlikely we may believe it to be). Really though, subjective experience is what kind of puts a stop to Metaphysical Materialism. If you look at the color red, like a red wall, you experience something. Maybe it's electrons moving through your brain, but that's not what you feel. You don't feel the electrons moving. You feel/experience a very specific and distinct thing, that is clearly as real as the experience of seeing red in a dream (you ACTUALLY do experience seeing red in the dream, it's just the dream object is not real). The experience of seeing red is a singular, real entity, that is entirely different from whatever material underpinning one may claim actually generate the experience.
Anyway, good luck on your English paper!
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Post by captainnoob on Sept 25, 2006 9:03:01 GMT -5
*ahem*
I like stuff.
The End
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Post by rihochan on Sept 27, 2006 2:27:46 GMT -5
I don't particularly mind if you use mine... don't know about the others though.
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Post by rihochan on Sept 27, 2006 13:16:20 GMT -5
lol.... there is no real point to sarcasm on the boards then is there?
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Post by sinistar on Sept 27, 2006 14:43:45 GMT -5
Actually, currency is a social construct that allowed people to apply a specific value to things AND barter for that exact amount, instead of the older bartering system where you valued something in a relative fashion based on what you needed at the time.
(This was not a bad system because people got what they needed. Extreme massing of fortunes which the economic expansion you speak hasn't benefitted humankind in the way you think. One percent of the world's population control the wealth and many starve and live in absolute poverty. Bartering for what you need and have equal value isn't a horrible concept. Why should a blanket you need at the time be worth less than an ounce of gold? The only reason is because we've been arbitrarily trained to believe that. People have been overusing resources longer with the advent of money than they have without. Beagle we should chat more often I feel like I'm back in my philosophy class from last year. A movie you all might want to check out is called "What the bleep do we know".
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Post by Beagle on Sept 27, 2006 18:16:57 GMT -5
But here's the issue. The bartering system DIDN'T prevent the concentration of wealth into the upper 1%. The aristocracy always existed. So it's not like they invented currency out of pure greed. Currency was created to add stability to the economy and open it up to MORE people.
For example, let's say I'm a travelling doctor. I have ABSOLUTELY no need for whatever it is you have, let's say you have lots of pelts. So why would I ever travel to an area where the main bartering was done in pelts? But, with currency, your pelts have a value that can easily be compared to the value of my skills. So if I know that I have medicine that paid for in X currency, I need X currency to cover my costs. What's that in pelts? No idea, but if you have money, suddenly we can actually do business.
Of course the bartering system isn't horrible, it worked for a long time, but neither is a currency system. Currency doesn't make it easier for people to amass wealth, it makes it easier for wealth to change hands. In a bartering system, if I'm a warlord, and I control 90% of the food production of a region, and everyone else is throwing animal skins at my door, we don't really have a healthy economy. But if I know how much a pelt is worth, I can buy it up for currency, allowing the sellar to take his currency and spend on what he deems to be a good deal, and I can turn around and sell the pelt to another warlord for money, which I can spend on something that's actually useful to me.
We aren't arbitrarily trained to believe a blanket is worth less than gold. Many of us simply don't have a need for that many blankets, but a lot of us would really love to have some gold jewelry. Hell, I'd trade one of my blankets for some nice jewelry, if I liked jewelry. But in an impoverished area of the world, the market is different. That's why each country has it's own currency, and it's own markets. That's why a free market obeys the laws of supply and demand. The rules would hold true in a bartering system, too. A currency system just makes everything easier.
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