Materialism And its effects
People are forgetting their moral values and often fail to understand the distinction between right choices and the wrong ones. The only thing that matters is good quality life and false comforts. They think that everything around them is dictated by need of humans and is being provided by the environment. All their beliefs are based on scientific inference only. The worst of all they have lost faith in God as they refuse to believe in anything that we cannot see or hear or touch. As a result, they remain unrepentant after committing sin. Thus materialism has adversely affected the entire framework of our society.
The impact of materialism in society is a complex subject. Materialism can be defined as a dominating sense of desire to pursue wealth and other tangible things that can provide physical comforts that ignores the importance of spiritual values. The characteristics of such materialistic people are greed for money, tendency to become rich quickly even if it involves a lot of risk. It also involves the desire to live in plush houses, wearing highly expensive clothes and jewelry and driving flashy cars. In short, the urge to lead an extravagant life.
To evaluate the effects of materialism, let’s first examine what materialism promotes. In the most austere sense, materialism states that all that exists is physical matter — negating thought, feeling, human will, and faith. In a more subtle course, materialism promotes the idolatry of possessions or material wealth. Possessions are believed to fill all human need and characterize quality of life. For a godless society, the philosophy of materialism may seem plausible.
The Essay on Meaning to Human Life
Is there any meaning to human life? After listening to the first two lectures I gathered what I felt to be Professor Amrbosio’s definitions of the hero and the saint. I took notes and after going back through and reading them it helped me to put a few things together. He asks the question about whether or not human existence is meaningful or absurd. We live in a hostile and deadly environment so ...
We can still mend our ways and move towards a beautiful world. For this, we have to look for a purpose in our life. Each individual has to make some changes in his outlook. We have to separate ourselves from material world. This will make us happy both with or without the material things that we desire. It will make us feel that “if I get that thing it’s good but if I do not get that it’s fine with me”. It’s not very easy for us to get this kind of mental set up but it is not an impossible task too. The rough phase of economy has given us some valuable lessons. That, all the tangible things of the world that we acquire may go some day but still we have the strength within us to survive in tough condition. We are happy that we have not lost ourselves and the support of our family. These things matter more than any other material things of life. We have to give top priority to hard work and not to any shortcut route to achieve success. There is a sense of truth and honesty associated with hard work which can give us immense satisfaction. We have to increase our knowledge of reality that are non-physical. Lack of knowledge of the non-physical aspects of our life is a major cause of downfall not only of an individual but collectively as a society. Spirituality help us to know our real identity. If we lose our wealth it can be replaced but if we lose our own self then we cannot replace that.
