“The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.”
Herbert Marcuse
It was in his One-Dimensional Man that Marcuse made this observation. I did touch on this topic during January; recall for example Socrates’ view on the many things he could do without, and master Gennai’s view (23 January’s post). I, however, want to rekindle this topic, especially from Karl Marx’s view.
Marx argued that the devaluation of people in the world is in direct proportion to the increasing value of things in the world. The Belgian philosopher, Raoul Vaneigem, took it together quite well when he said that the organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that, what in itself would enable us to construct it, richly plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance.
This result in making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden, in the end condemning us all to slavery. To him, production and consumption are the distractions of modern society. How do we free ourselves from such slavery? Well, Sir Bertrand Russell thought that freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
May you every day evaluate the driving force behind the tendency to get caught up in the accumulation of material objects – of things. Do also remember – these things do not last, they have no eternal value…
The object, oh how I love thee,
for I want everything that my eyes can see.
Just remember, wanting that which you do not need
may easily boil over into an unhealthy state of greed.
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