Could too much focus on materialism be a happiness damper?

It's one of those cliches that contains a half truth - like the meek inheriting the earth - a sop to the impoverished and weedy (such as myself) who like to think the rich, powerful and Godlike also tremble in the dark like feverish lemmings. But do they? Do they really?

I think it's relative, a slippery slope. Wealthy people typically look to the even richer people over there. After more than enough money, it turns into wanting power/status. They get wrapped into the next mindset. It seems there is no end to want, the Maslow hierarchy of human needs. This is a most interesting thing to explore and notice.

I think that's totally unfair. If I can't be a multi-gazillionaire with my own private space station and an accompanying shuttle in permanent orbit, acting as my site for lavish, zero-gravity cocktail parties, then what's the point of human life, eh? Answer me that, why don't you? My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

mykle, you blame the erosion of belief in God for unhappiness? Let's be clear about this, we do not just face a choice between untrammeled greed and ignorant theism. Your suggestion I suppose is that if we spent our lives in benighted ignorance, on our knees trembling in fear of some terrible (if non-existent) deity we'd all suddenly find happiness and satisfaction. Guilt, self-denial, masochism, sadism, intolerance, willful ignorance, exploitation, wanton violence and genocide are just some of the things faith in god has increased in the world and yet for the proponents of such deluded nonsense it is the panacea for all ills. I'd like to suggest that in fact most people are not greedy; most people want a sound roof over their heads, enough food for them and their families, clothes for their backs, good friends, fulfilling work and time to be creative and at ease. Neither the baubles of consumerism nor the empty promises of heaven or the threats of hell can bring the happiness that a world of reason, liberty and equality could deliver. "Neither Master nor God!"

I read that mykle, thanks for the link. I think you and I could get into quite a debate about modernism, primitivism and science, but for now I'll confine myself to saying that the element of your apparent position that I find most disturbing is the idea that the promotion of myths might be a salve to our problems. If that is part of your stance then I'd say that you're in some pretty scary company, company that I would avoid as a matter of course.

Taking the first part of your response first mykle: I certainly do not believe that people should only believe what I believe. However, if someone ventures to put their opinions, religious or political, on a message board they must surely expect to have them challenged by people of other persuasions. Now back to the top: scientists do not claim to have proven the non-existence of god or gods, at least not the best scientists. Rather they argue that the existence of gods is highly improbable and certainly not the best way to explain the universe as our best observations show it to be. Scientific theories differ from theistic dogma in one vital regard: scientists seek evidence to support their theories and propose theories which correspond to the evidence. Theists propound faith and can adduce only scripture or some vague inner feeling to support their pronouncements. My anarchism is my own response to my understanding of history, politics, economics and ecology. I readily accept that anarchism is a theory (or more accurately a collection of theories) the supporters of which must argue from historical example and challenging, adaptable critique of the world as it is today. Because I believe my anarchism to be scientific (in its regard for evidence rather than in the determinist Marxist sense) and religion to be a matter of faith, the blinder the better, of course I would argue that I am more likely to be right than people who hold that there is a god. I fail to see how a "oh no there isn't. Oh yes there is" argument will do us any good at all, however I would maintain that if I came across good evidence that anarchist theories are all wrong, that, for example, some form of hierarchical organisation is not only necessary but inevitable, I would change my ideas and my label; I would recognise that I was wrong. Religion is not like that, faith is a different creature and far inferior to reason. No, I find it much easier to believe in the Big Bang than in the existence of god. God is an unnecessary explanation which supposes the pre-existence of a presumably highly complex creature outside of time and space. Why, when we can observe and explain so much, should I make the huge leap to explaining away the universe with reference to god? I may as well never have reached seven years old and still believe that it is a fairy which comes and takes away my tooth and leaves a coin in return; I might as well believe in Santa! In all seriousness mykle, I would ask you to read 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins. I dare say that it won't shift you an inch, but it might just help explain to you the existence of a very significant number of atheists in the world.

"I've heard it said that the Big Bang could well have been the result of a collision in the 13th... dimension" Quote of the week!

"I'm not really all that bothered about who is right about what..." No? Well I am, and there are some very good reasons why. People die because of ignorance; people's lives are blighted by ignorance and persecution for religious reasons. I'd like to say that it doesn't matter to me that you choose to believe that all ideas have equal validity, but in fact it matters to all of us on planet Earth. If you give as much credence to the god of the old testament as you do to Darwinism, to the Armageddon-seeking nutters as to modern Earth science then you're no better than the inquisitors who burned heretics, you're no better than the murderers whose madness you defend. Where exactly do you draw the line? Should we respect the belief that abortion is murder and thus give succour to the scum that bomb clinics? "as improved measuring techniques highlight the discrepancies between theory and reality." That mykle, is called science. The process you describe is the scientific method; it is the best tool we have to try to approach the true nature of life and the universe. To have faith in the primitive inventions of scared, probably delusional, prophets when the scientific alternative is available to you is to be willingly ignorant; actually it is nothing short of misanthropic. "I've seen Dawkins several times on TV and he has always failed to impress and come across as a man with a mission and not with an open mind as you try to suggest scientist are." Well perhaps you should try reading some of his books. He makes no bones about being on a mission; I have the sense that he hates ignorance and loves rational enquiry. He is an atheist and he is on a mission; unlike so many religionists with the same kind of drive however, Dawkins will not issue a fatwah to have you killed, he will not damn you to hell, he will not call a crusade against your homeland and he will not ask you your religion if you want to marry into his family. Taking pride in not knowing, no more than that taking pride in not wanting to know is not clever, it's not wise. If that arch-butcher Jehovah were to exist your oh-so-openmindedness wouldn't save you anyway, and that's the funniest thing of this whole generous spirit to all religions thing. Haven't you noticed that there are very few religions that admit the possibility that other faiths may contain some element of truth; they are all mutually exclusive. In fact it is only science which says "demonstrate your proofs and if they work then they will deserve conditional credence"..... all the others just want to sit back and watch fence-sitters like you, and atheists like me, suffer together in hell, or, if they can't wait for that they just want to burn our arses in the here and now.

hehe..blaming scientists, materialism, erosion of the belief in God? So we're all quite happy to agree that we're all more miserable now than we were in biblical times, before big bang theory and prior to the industrial revolution? science, btw, never deals (or has claimed to deal) with truth...only theories which are either strengthened or discarded through measurement and observation. That's how it evolves...Science aint interested in God. Science is interested in Science, although some people have claimed to have felt close to God when having those Eureka moments, just as the preacher may feel close to God when praying. Some people feel close to God when dancing and is to some a DJ. :P tut So I wonder why we're all unhappier now than we were 'before'? And where is the evidence? :P

The notion of happy or happiness is specious. Once meeting basic survival needs, there is the next thing, then the next, a chase of fulfillment and enrichment through one vehicle or another (God, money/stuff, sex/love, success, recognition, substances) with stops of relief along the way. The will and ego are forward projectiles. Today, the difference is the speed and immediacy of the imagery and examples of what is possible. So, the opportunity for that existential nausea is not only ever present, but almost seems to become a default state of mind. The anecdote can only be not wanting or expecting anything whatsoever. Can we do this in contemporary society without becoming either ascetics or nihilists? I do think more and more it's an appealing idea, and easier than it sounds.

mykle, why did you move a post or copy a post or whatever it is that you've done? The more I think about that manipulation of the thread the angrier it makes me. Of course I could not reply to mykle's 21.19 thread at 21.02 & I'd be very unlikely to post two long posts uninterrupted by someone else's arguments. Was this down to you mykle? I'm not on a mission but neither will I let pass without argument religious pronouncements. There is this bizarre tendency in our society to give religion some special status in the world of ideas, to give respect freely to its witterings. I don't see why I should tip toe around on account of religion. Oh, and I've pulled a couple of muscles in my leg so I'm trapped here in front of the PC!

I get woken up every morning between 5.30 and 6.00 by a cat my son rescued from the car park in our local town. I get up before dawn every day thanks to the cat biting my nose or my ear, and I write. It's bizarre, but I've written just over 90,000 words towards a novel since we've had the cat and most of them down to her early alarm calls! The weather here is a little more tranquil than in Blightey - we're just at the tail end of the weather system; the sky is grey, but no storms. I'm not sure where you are going with the benevolent dictatorship argument. A good place to start with a critique of the suggestion though would be to consider the impossibility that such a ruler could have what the cybernetician Stafford Beer called requisite variety; that is the capability to grasp all of the necessary information to make such an autocracy function. Any conceivable benevolent dictator would certainly have to have godlike powers in order to make the regime work; I neither believe in god nor the efficacy of autocracies. In any event, and to return all the way to the top of this thread, a high degree of autonomy and responsibility seems to me to be a vital component in human happiness. I believe in shared decision making in the family, in the workplace and at every conceivable level. Autocracy, and indeed all hierarchy, infantilises human beings; this cannot make for life satisfaction or enduring happiness. Right, I have to limp off now to get something done with my day. Bye.

Something of an irrelevant aside but I can never quite grasp why atheists turn to Dawkins to back up their argument. He is an excellent biologist and I recommend his books 'The Selfish Gene' and to some extent 'The Blind Watchmaker' a sound though hardly novel critique of Paleys's teleological proof for the existence of god in all its forms. But in his latest book, he makes a giant leap from scientific explanation to atheism with no convincing philosophical argument bridging the two. It is the most hideous non-sequitur I have encountered in recent memory. If you want a better and more thought provoking argument for atheism, I'd recommend Daniel Dennett (although he also tends to go into lengthy scientific asides which really adds little to his case). The older generation of atheists seem to me to be more intellectually able and philosphically sound than these new everyman-science and philosophy-lite fashionistas. Most notably, Anthony Flew presents one of the most lucid case for atheism... jude "Cacoethes scribendi" http://www.judesworld.net

The reason I recommended Dawkins is because he is highly readable; I have read quite a few criticisms of 'The God Delusion' but I still find it quite a consistent and thorough argument from the point of departure that god is exceedingly unlikely to exist. Mykle, if Stephen Hawking believes in the existence of god, I will eat my woolly hat. The oldest trick in the book for theists is to take the use of the word "god" by physicists and assume that it means that they are theists. Einstein used the word god quite often, but I do not believe that he was a theist. Certainly Dawkins (again - sorry jude) states categorically that Hawking only ever uses the word god in a metaphorical or poetic fashion. If Hawking's grasp of cosmology exceeds Dawkins' mykle, I suggest that Dawkins' grasp of Hawking exceeds yours. Jude, the case for atheism can hardly be presented in one book or by one man. The case for atheism is a multi-strand and very powerful stream of ever-strengthening evidence. If you don't mind me saying, well no, actually whether you mind or not, whatever the flaws of "philosophy-lite" atheism, it remains a great deal more persuasive than any arguments for the existence of god. God is a supposition based on dark ignorance; you go ahead and prove his existence to me! What's that? It's all a question of faith? I can see that we're back into dark ignorance and its alleged benefits.

I have no desire to prove anything to anybody. I don't mind what other people may or may not believe in this regard. I find it difficult to understand why everyone is so evangelical with their point of view be it for or against theism (or any other spiritual idea)...I find theology-lite just as distasteful as philosophy-lite. jude

Hi M, Materialism is a slippery term. I think (and correct me if...) you were talking about materialism in the context of consumerism. My understanding of materialism in the sense that it threatens a spititual concept is materialism as a type of 'nothing-buttery' reductionism. Consumer materialism does perhaps dampen happiness but I still believe we should have our basic needs met and promises of the hereafter shouldn't be used to pacify those in dire-poverty. A trendy church phrase of the last decade was something like 'we believe in life before death' . I think Douglas Couplant described it well with this neo-logism from Gen X "Poor Buoyancy: (page 82) The realization that one was a better person when one had less money. I know that I for one enjoyed the happiest 12 months of my life in 2006 when I was utterly skint and living in a tiny studio flat! jude

The most important point in all this for me mykle is that it is not only possible but also desirable to be both against materialism (in the consumerist sense) and against the idea of god. I do not suffer from the confusion between organised religion and the idea of god; I can see perfectly well that neither one necessarily depends on the other although I am opposed to both. I should say that I believe protestantism provided the first step towards atheism by denying the need for priests or intermediaries (or wizards) and laying the foundations for a personal quest for god. It has been precisely that search and its outcome - not finding something for which there is no evidence - that has in part given rise to modern atheism. For me anti-clericalism makes a great deal of sense, but it is only truly fulfilled when the fruit it bears is atheism. I don't believe I said that Hawking overtly denied the existence of god, but I do not believe either that he would argue that there is a god in any theistic sense. He may use the word god metaphorically but it is specious to argue that that means he supports the god hypothesis.