Comments on: Earthly Materialism

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:11:22 +0000

I don’t know if you guys have read The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff, but she argues a similar point, but puts all our strange habits down to our unsatisfied need for maternal Oneness & support that wasn’t fulfilled in our civilised upbringings.

It’s maybe my favourite book around at the moment, and the only book that brought me to tears.

By: alistair

alistair — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 03:07:12 +0000

i love technology as a way of becoming reconnected with the tribe………….and my earth-toned walls in my new apartment/offices……..
and my new guitar amp. a vintage `70s ampeg tube amp. this thing is so organic and living that it virtually breathes.
some do materialism beautifully and some externalise thier retentive fears exquisitely.
gaudi vs. mondrian?

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 03:35:54 +0000

Yeah, that Alan Watts quote is great. I think it is in The Wisdom of Insecurity - which is an awesome book.

Here’s also a fairly relevant piece I wrote a while back on over-turning the negative side of consumerism using itself:

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/05/29/radical-consumerism/

By: David

David — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 21:16:12 +0000

I like my electric toothbrush.

A lot.

And my cell phone.

But no, I do feel that when I am obsessional about getting my latest “Most Fabulous Object In The Universe” (TM) that I am probably way off in my consciousness.

Life should be appreciated for what it is, which is perversely made difficult by the way we are.

By: Gyrus

Gyrus — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:49:18 +0000

There’s the interesting counter-example of Wasson taking Sandoz psilocybin pills to Maria Sabina, the curandera in Mexico who first gave him mushrooms. She reportedly said, “The spirit of the mushroom is in the little pills.”

But then, we’re talking addiction here, and while some people get tangled up with psychedelics, they’re just not in the same category for this argument as coke and heroin (THC is different again, I think). Stories like the one about Sabina and the psilocybin pills are useful to counter any dogma or knee-jerk dismissals of modern life; but the evidence for many of our problems being to do with our forgetting of traditional knowledge about nature, and our accelerating development of artifice to fill the gaps, it just keeps mounting up.

Optimism about materialism? I don’t think what our culture calls materialism is actually all about matter. Alan Watts said, “No modern city looks as if it were made by people who love material.” Our materialism is a curious application of abstract mental models to the material world.

I think I get your point, though - consumerism does have elements of a kind of blind groping, a peripheral awareness we’re reaching for something we’ve lost. Hopefully we can bring this fully into awareness and solve the actual problem before we trash the material world!