Why are humans a materialistic species?

Question

Why are humans a materialistic species?

Answer 1

Because the richer you are, the more likely you are to survive in times of disaster or famine. It's not some terrible sin to be materialistic, it's a practical reaction to  an uncertain future.

Also, history shows that men with more money tend to have more children; so natural selection will prefer those men with an acquisitive nature.

Answer 2

Because we have hands to carry things around with, skills to build more and more useful things, build surpluses, steal other people's surpluses, defend our own against other people and, ultimately, figure the "best people" have the most, and or coolest, stuff.

Granted, I've just reduced 3 million years into one sentence...  

Answer 3

Your question is the quest of my life. For so long, as ve

Answer 4

Humans are a materialistic species because that is how human culture is.   How this culture came to and evolved to is another question which I have yet to find the answer to.

Answer 5

We are the best makers of things. Its the impressiveness of the objects creation that we consider "valuable", when it comes to materialism. Because of this, the stage is set for...

Things/objects are a part of our identity from a very early stage of our development. Our parents rewarded us by giving things, and punished us by taking those things away. These things became part of what we identified ourselves as.

In school, show-and-tell reinforced the mentality of identification/association of possessions.

As we grow older, there may not be any experience that would change this way of thinking, and toy cars become real cars.

Its a matter of childhood designs being carried out.

If you want to get more into the psychology of it, it has to do with the ego finding any device to prove its existence (but that would be the long explanation).

Answer 6

Not all humans are materialistic...and is societies influence. We aren't born materialistic.  

Answer 7

Like many if not most species, humans are naturally concerned with their own survival.  Unlike most species, we are able to use terms like "materialistic" to criticize ourselves for perfectly natural behavior.