I have just come back from the city centre and let me tell you it is manic down there. People are rushing around, darting from shop to shop looking for bargains. Looking for that one thing that might make the trip into town, the stress, the fatigue and the inevitable credit card bill at the end of the month worth it.
You can see it etched onto their faces as they barge past you swinging their packed bags against your legs, letting the shop doors swing back into your face, snatching the last bargain off the shelf as you peer at it. They are searching. They are regressing back to past times; the hunter/gatherer gene is humming in their nervous systems as they pursue their prey. The cheap skirt, the reduced electrical goods, the half price cosmetics, the discounted hammer drills, they want it, they want it all!
They know that deep down they will enjoy that vicarious thrill, the adrenaline burst of happiness if they could just get that ipod for another 25 quid cheaper down the road! They will be crowned king of the jungle when they get back to the office or home and lay out their catch like returning hero’s, back from some dark lands showing off their tobacco and potatoes.
But will they be happy? We all know that doom laden feeling as the credit card bill drops through the door. We all know that we have to pay eventually. But we may be able to assuage that guilt a little bit by telling ourselves that yes we really did need that new extra large plasma screen in the lounge and yes it does really make me happy when I look at it. But does it? Are we really happy? And does that happiness last? I would argue no it doesn’t and we are just fooling ourselves.
Material happiness is transitory. We soon become unhappy with the things we own. For example I have an MP3 player. It’s very good, cost a lot of money and has a 10 gig hard drive. It contains lots of mp3s I have downloaded. It’s fine. So why do I want an ipod? Will it make me happy? Maybe, for a while (If I could even reconcile having to find another 200 plus quid to buy one) but my happiness would soon flag. That’s the trouble with material happiness is that it soon dissolves in the sea of materialism that’s out there. Our happy state is bombarded by media messages telling us of the next best thing. The new car that will make your wife want to have oral sex with you on the beach, the new stereo that will turn your shambolic bedsit into a haven of lurve, the clothes, the glasses, the furniture, the lifestyle that can be yours, just by remembering your pin number when you next venture out with your credit card.
For years we have been warned against the dangers of materialism by many great thinkers. Marx, for instance told us that we would become entrapped by the processes of capitalism, of lives forever blighted by what he called embourgoisement. That in the unthinking consumerism of our time we will in our attempts to ape the bourgeoisie, to become middle class, become more and more alienated from society from what we really are. Capitalism tends to create layer after layer of 'false needs.' In order to expand markets, it is useful to use psychology, sociology, mass media and the drama of sex and violence to create a demand for 'surplus production.' Marx spoke of this as the 'realization problem.' Since there is ever more production with ever fewer workers to buy it up, goods accumulate so advertising and the generation of 'false' needs is important millions of pounds being spent to 'colonize consciousness’ to make us want what we don’t need.
Anwar El-Sadat tells us ‘Most people seek after what they do not possess and are thus enslaved by the very things they want to acquire’. We become slaves to what we possess or to what we want to possess rather than the other way around. Why should a mechanical device like an ipod enslave me and colonise my consciousness more than the other things that are happening in my life or my world? How can a cut price suit change my life?
Someone called Doug Horton tells us 'Materialism is the only form of distraction from true bliss'. But what is this ‘true bliss’ Horton is on about. It can’t be the true bliss of bagging a bargain on a wet weekday in early January can it? No I think it is more. Marx missed the point and Weber got it wrong in the Protestant Ethic when he told us that if we were prosperous then God was smiling on us. Henry David Thoreau tells us that Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have even lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.
This is what I believe. I believe that to be happy we need to have a more spiritual basis to our lives. By this I don’t mean that we have to become religious per ce or to live like hermits in a cave renouncing all luxuries, but that we need to understand that things in themselves will not bring happiness into our lives. Materialism remains unsatisfying, it cannot help us to understand or explain our deeper selves. We all have aspirations that go beyond the material. These may be unspecific longings for more freedom in our lives, to find a spiritual pathway that will lead us away from this bizarre and confusing life we are forced to live, to be more understanding or more understood. And these longings cannot be satisfied by matter.
Hindu’s and Buddhists have a similar approach to materialism and the spiritual side to our nature. They tell us that ‘the deceptions and delusions of materialism stem from its inevitable superficiality. Materialism traps us, unawares, in a world of possessions hag-ridden by irrational fears of likely loss and lurking dangers. Finally, it degrades creativity to consumption’.
Again Marx pointed to this as he argues ‘why can’t I be a poet one day, an artist the next?’ Why can’t I be creative and get in touch with my own humanity? Why must I live a life alienated from nature? It is because we are caught up in the whirlpool of consumption and it blinds us to what we really are. We believe in the holy grail of the sale. We believe that the transformation of our old cd player into a new cd player with surround sound and built in mp3 player (on special offer just this week) will bring us happiness.
True happiness can’t be bought in the January sale. It has to be sought after; it has to be found in one’s relationship with one’s God, Deity or spiritual beliefs. The spiritual option is not to renounce modernity or demonise development. It is, instead, to transcend the spirit of materialism. It is to ensure that material development remains conducive to the blossoming of the human spirit. It is to remain vigilant against the danger of losing the needle of life in the haystack of the material circumstances for living.
If anything the tsunami in Asia this Christmas should warn us all about how tenuous a grip with have upon our material lives. One minute we have everything, the next nothing, all we have left after such an event can only be our belief in something higher. Something that can lift us above the loss of our clothes, mobile phones, mp3 players and lifestyles. Maybe this is why reports about the kindness and humility of the Thais have been widely reported by travellers returning from Thailand. Is it that they, being in the main Buddhists, do have a belief that transcends material life.
True happiness can, I believe, only be found in spiritual happiness. Don’t get me wrong, I am still a searcher, only I am not searching the stores of mammon down in the high street for happiness, I am searching elsewhere. I have not found it in the churches of the Christians nor the mosques of Islam. I have touched upon this spiritual happiness once or twice in the past years of my life but it is ephemeral. It comes and goes. I hope it will enter my life once again but I know that I must seek it out. I must seek it out with the same vigour that the shoppers downtown are seeking out their bargains. But I know that my happiness will not come cut price from the bargain bin nor will it only last a few short months. I want my happiness to transcend time and to be with me forever.
Hare Krishna!
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