29.0 Our World – Materialism in General Page 1 of 14 29:0 Our World – Materialism in General Over the last 100 years a major change has occurred in Society; particularly starting in the second half of the 20 th Century when Christian originated morality and values in Western society gave way to one founded upon materialism. This depressing development of civilisation was recognised by the Russian author and historian Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who, in an address given at Harvard University on 8th June 1978 said: 1 When the modern Western states were being formed it was proclaimed as a principle that governments are meant to serve man and that man lives in order to be free and pursue happiness. ... In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development. On a similar topic, Francis August Schaeffer, an American Evangelical Christian theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor, speaking about this downward trend in society, particularly in the USA, offered the thought that: 2 Gradually, that which had become the basic thought form of modern people became the almost totally accepted viewpoint, an almost monolithic consensus. And as it came to the majority of people through art, music, drama, theology, and the mass media, values died. As the more Christian-dominated consensus weakened, the majority of people adopted two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence. Personal peace means just to be let alone, not to be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city - to live one's life with minimal possibilities of being personally disturbed. Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren. Affluence means an overwhelming and increasing prosperity - a life made up of things, things, and more things - a success judged by an ever higher level of material abundance." All this change is primarily a response to commercialism spurred by scientific progress. Advancements in science have allowed engineers and technologists to develop so many aids to living that our lives have been totally changed. In discussing Religion and Science, the philosopher Bertrand Russell also stated that: 3 Science is the attempt to discover, by means of observation, and reasoning based upon it, first, particular facts about the world, and then laws connecting facts with one another and (in fortunate cases) making it possible to predict future occurrences. Connected with this theoretical aspect of science there is scientific technique, which utilises scientific knowledge to produce comforts and luxuries that were impossible, or at least much more expensive in a pre-scientific era. It is this latter aspect that gives such great importance to science even for those who are not scientists. The consequence is that, as Solzhenitsyn noted: 4 DAJ 20/12/2019 18:57:37 29.0 Our World – Materialism in General Page 2 of 14 The majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about. Could my father, born in 1898, have imagined the current use of mobile communication devices 120 years later? Lives of most people have changed out of all recognition. The Rabbi and social commentator Jonathan Sacks explained that: 5 More and more of our encounters are disembodied. We communicate increasingly by phone and email, less by personal presence. The result is a loss of human contact and all that implies. Virtual communities are no substitute for the real thing. John Gray spells out the danger: 'The mirage of virtual community serves to reconcile us to the growing dereliction of the social institutions and public places in which ... unprogrammed encounters occur. If cities are desolated and schools stalked by fear, if we shrink from strangers and children as threats to our safety, a retreat into the empty freedom of cyberspace may seem like a liberation. Yet living much of our lives in this space means giving up part of what makes us human [extract from John Gray, Endgames, Blackwell, 1997, Pg120] This is symptomatic of an age where technology is driving our lives as opposed being available to support our balanced material and spiritual objectives. This is only one element of humanity’s desire for tools which make the material life easier or more exciting. Our material affluence has engendered an overwhelming urge for things, and more things which goes far, far beyond what we actually need to live our lives. Fifty years ago, the average house was probably half the current size, holidays abroad were for the rich and privileged, no one had heard of the personal computer, space exploration was still in the realms of science fiction, television was in its infancy, and the age when most adult members of a family had even one motor car was yet to emerge. I was born into this rapidly developing world precisely 9 months after the formal cessation of World War II; a ‘boomer baby’ when my parental joy abounded. The years that followed saw the exponential rise in consumerism – a belief that the more that people buy the better it is for the country. What is really meant is that company financiers and owners become richer the more profit a company makes; a consequence of people buying more of their goods or services. The whole of the commerce is driven by this single imperative. Where will this stop; how can we bridle this initiative? Commercialism is rapacious and is condoned and supported by those in political, financial and industrial power. I recognise that we are currently in the throes of a modern phenomenon, but many of the elements have existed for many hundreds of years. In the ‘Writings From The Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart ’, Philotheus of Sinai is reported to have written more than 1000 years ago that it is said in the Epistle to the Ephesians: 6 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. From this Russian mystic’s perspective to one of the USA’s most respected philosophers and essayists, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who remarked that: 7 DAJ 20/12/2019 18:57:37 29.0 Our World – Materialism in General Page 3 of 14 ...it happens often that the well-bred and refined, the inhabitants of cities, dwelling amidst colleges, churches, and scientific museums, lectures, poets, libraries, newspapers, and other aids supposed intellectual are more vicious and malignant than the rude country people, and need to have their corrupt voting and violence corrected by the cleaner and wiser suffrages of poor farmers. ...and even before all this, the 4 th century environment was not a lot different. John Chrysostom, once the Patriarch of Constantinople and eventually a hermit, observed that: 8 I look at the city in which I live, and see only turmoil. I see men cheating one another, so that those who are most devious grow rich at the expense of those who are most honest. I see men being unfaithful to their wives, consorting with prostitutes rather than sleeping in their marriage bed. I see men planning all sorts of schemes to gain power, doing down all who oppose them. I see empty churches, because people know that the teaching goes against all they want to achieve. I see the clergy and bishops devoting their attention only to the material assets of the churches, while ignoring the sick and the dying, the poor and the needy. I can hear no voices crying out against all this. What hope can we find in such a black and terrifying picture...? Born 1640 years later, the British Labour politician Ed Balls gave us a much more recent perspective in his autobiography ‘Speaking Out’. He argued in the book’s preface that, even over the 21 years that he was in politics, it became more and more challenging because: 9 We live in an era where trust in mainstream political leaders and parties has slumped to an all-time low. Outsiders to the extremes of right and left have been making the political running. And politics is more short-termist, more populist, more unstable, more risky than at any time in my life... Being much more forthright about the situation in the mid-20 th century, Dr. Peter Marshall, a Scottish-American preacher, wrote: 10 The problem of lying - which is called propaganda ... The problem of selfishness - which is called nationalism or self-interest ... The problem of greed - which is often called profit or good business ... The problem of licence disguised as liberty ... The problem of lust masquerading as love ... The challenge of materialism - the hook that is baited with security ... These are the problems that confront us now. Of all these traits, the one which most people accept as being uppermost is greed, disguised in many different ways. Certainly in most avenues of life self-interest seems to bubble to the surface and is the basis of many commercial and political decisions. According to the Welsh geneticist Steve Jones, the 18 th century Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith, in the same year as the creation of the American Declaration of Independence, published his book ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in which he observed that: 11 It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interest.