With our entire economy based upon desire for material goods—which certainly goes against Buddhism—it stands to reason that mind's development must be held back, for only mind has the capacity to end its servitude to desire, which makes it a threat to the consumerist ethos.
To become entranced by consumerism doesn’t require much of an education. It doesn’t take any intelligence to crave a new Ford pickup or a designer handbag. In fact, the only requirement to get a degree from 'Consumer University' is having the uncontrollable impulse to buy things. That one should give up their interest in an education based on wonder, exploration, experiment, and wisdom, is probably necessary.
To help the child crush any sense of wonder they might have, the American educational system is prepared to meet the challenge in which any high school graduate will look upon their education as 12 years of wrestling with the most immense kind of boredom conceivable. As a consequence of this boring education, in which the bud of wisdom is kept from blossoming, upon graduation, the only thing the average young person wishes to do is to abuse substances, have unprotected sex, and purchase material goods. It is only much later that they find out this leads to depression: that curious state of terrible loss when we don’t know quite what it is we’ve lost! Only a few realize that they have lost something. Perhaps Paul Tillich describes the sense of this loss best.
"The anxiety of meaninglessness is anxiety about the loss of an ultimate concern, of a meaning which gives meaning to all meanings. This anxiety is aroused by the loss of a spiritual centre, of an answer, however symbolic and indirect, to the question of the meaning of existence."
To use another more common expression to explain this inexplicable loss, youth just sold their soul to the devil but with a twist: their parents and the state forced them to do it in the interest of education when in fact their education was for the sake of consumerism. That portion of their being which is able to dive into higher meanings and contexts, was never developed. In fact, it remains undeveloped if not retarded. This poses a real danger, because if the brain’s higher centers are not adequately stimulated, the odds are good that one will be more or less depressed the rest of their lives. The best one can hope for, then, are brief moments of consumer rapture followed by a hangover of boredom.
Consumerism, as any other addiction - abuse of drugs, alcohol, sex or whatever, is a futile attempt to fill the hole in one's life. The need for creative and spiritual achievement and genuine human relationships are substituted by low-value surogates. It's like eating paper instead of grains. It fills the stomach for a while but it doesn't feed the body.
And while it is an understandable impulse for the hungry mind to behave in such unreasonable way, the really bad thing is when society actually advertises that kind of behaviour. It's can be easily considered a crime.
Posted by: dandellion | February 10, 2011 at 06:40 AM