Do you think that modern materialism strips us of the need to feel responsible for our surroundings?

Question

Maybe I have not phrased the question very well. So far 66% of answers mention caves and the other talks about guilt and its only been 15 minutes...

Answer 1

materialism has existed far in the past and will continue into the future. What the internet has done has stopped communication in person and given people their own little enviroment like a bubble they can live in.

Answer 2

Absolutely not.  Modern wealth allows some of us enough time to feel guilty about having material wealth.

Answer 3

I think that materialism is not only a modern thing. It has existed for all recorded history back thousands of years and probably long before that.

And it does not remove the need to feel responsible for our surroundings. I am not completely sure we ever needed to feel responsible for our surroundings. Some feel that way and some don't, and it has been so for countless thousands of years. The very idea borders on religion, similar to talking about a need to feel connected to God.

Answer 4

No, I believe living in urban settings causes a sense of disgust in many inhabitants towards man's alterations of nature.  We who live in nature simply take care of it.  Some of the biggest hands-on conservationists are avid hunters/fishermen.  Try getting back to nature before you condemn capitalism for your choice to live in an unnatural setting.

Answer 5

Yes absolutly!  

And the materialism comes from an incorrect notion or perception of the universe.



We have free will. We can choose not to do this. That's a little different than a normal evolutionary progression in nature.

Don't make the  mistake of assuming that we are just animals and nothing more. Man creates his own reality with his thoughts. If that seems like an outrageous statement, I'm here to tell you, that that is what all enlightened people in the world know. The state of things in the world are the result of the collective thoughts of all the people in the world. Outragious? Maybe, but it is true.

Too much us and them thinking, too much thinking that the world is just stuff and therefore what does it matter what we do to our environment. It is all based on an incorrect world view. Reality is quite different than commonly assumed.

You might want to read some books by Fred Alan Wolf Phd who writes books about quantum physics and the nature of reality. The universe is far more strange than we think it is.

And man is far more than commonly thought.

Wolf's books include The Spiritual Universe,

The Dreaming Universe , Taking the Quantum Leap. Also a book called The Tao of Physics is an earlier book with a similar theme. But Wolf makes the ideas accessable to a layman and fun to read. If you have a modicum of scientific understanding none of these books are that difficult, though they will stretch your mind a bit.

The mechanistic view of the universe of cause and effect  is based on Newtonian physics several hundred years old. This is still the outlook of most scientists, and it is the predominant world view, but that is changing. That is by no means the universe that quantum physics describes.

Also, evolution is much more than just survival of the fittest. this aspect of evolution has been stressed at the expense of perhaps a more important concept, that of symbiosis. Evolution happens as much by cooperation among species as it does by competition. The first idea has so dominated our thinking, especially in the west, that we have arrived at a dog eat dog kind of perception of reality that has colored our cultural values, economic theories and more. It is a very limited view. That is what is wrong with the world.

And religions have limited views as much as reductionists scientist do.

I saw a bumper sticker recently that says a lot.

"God is too big to fit inside one religion"

That's because God, or the absolute or whatever you want to call it, is INFINITE. Beyond any religion's description and beyond any of our scientific descriptions. No concept can describe infinity.

You don't have to be religious per say to get something from what I'm saying.

This is what no one is talking about, that what the world needs to solve it's problems is higher consciousness. If you think that's a pipe dream, you are dead wrong. The world is full of people who have achieved this higher consciousness. I personally have met hundreds of them. As Bob Dylan said in a song, "there's something going on here, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr Jones?"

And as William Blake said "a fool and a wise man don't see the same tree"

Reality is a perception. Not a fixed rigid thing.

Shakespeare, another wise man, said the same thing . to paraphrase since I don't have it here in front of me, " the world is far more than your philosophers could possibly dream of"

Life is a dream! some people wake up from the dream. Blake and Shakespeare were among those who wake up.

How's that for food for thought?

If people truly understood what I am saying, their  views about the environment would be quite different.

Answer 6

Yes, if we still lived in caves, global warming wouldn't be an issue at all!

Answer 7

I think that once our basic need for food and shelter are satisfied we can turn our energy and attention elsewhere.  

I have noticed that since I have become more financially stable that I have been making more decisions based upon environmentally friendly products and services because I can afford them.

In college I could not afford anything but the cheapest and often more environmentally unfriendly products on the market.  

I think atleast in my case that modern materialism has helped me realize that if I can do something to help even if it is small is a good thing.  

On the other hand people who consider things disposable or have less feeling for material things will often buy cheaper and more disposable items than taking care of what they have...thus increasing trash via plastic, wood etc.