Living in a material world
How science and materialism blind us to ourselves
Madonna was not the first to name our materialist culture, although her 1985 hit captured the attraction of affluence and the usefulness of those who could provide it. She explained:
I'm very career-oriented. You are attracted to people who are ambitious that way, too, like in the song Material Girl. You are attracted to men who have material things because that's what pays the rents and buys you furs. That's the security. That lasts longer than emotions.1
But it’s not just Madonna, is it?
“Why have we become so focused on making money … and why are we so hard on people?” asked ‘Ange’ as she contemplated the latest round of cuts upon which the Board insisted. Good people being treated as simply line items on a spreadsheet by Directors who are schooled in the maximum profit approach to business.
“Do I really want to be a CEO?” she asked, somewhat rhetorically, although a little ruefully, as she reflected on this latest confrontation with her Board. While she knew they were committed to the success of the organisation, she was deeply aware of the values conflict at the heart of their disagreement. Ange had no doubt the Board prioritised dollars over dignity and profit over purpose.
How did this come about? Why have we become so focused on numbers, on data, on evidence, to the detriment of meaning, virtue and value? Why do we see people as a means to an end, for the value they can bring us? Why has value become about money rather than Value?
I’m not sure if the irony was lost on Mastercard with their much touted Priceless advertising campaign: “There are some things money can't buy; for everything else, there’s buying on credit.”
Sorry, my mistake: “for everything else there is Mastercard” said the original, with pride.
I touched on our hyper-materialist culture in a recent keynote presentation to an Australian based association of superannuation fund executives (FEAL). The talk hypothesised that we live at a unique moment in history where a number of cultural, technological, philosophical, and geopolitical trends are converging to create instability in society, the economy, the environment, and exhaustion in ourselves. This in turn creates a significant opportunity to influence the world our descendants will inhabit.
cultural, technological, philosophical, and geopolitical trends are converging to create instability in society, the economy, the environment, and exhaustion in ourselves
Since Covid eased its grip I have been researching 'post-pandemic leadership' for clients, and rapidly concluded the challenge is not simply recovering from the pandemic and implementing new ways of working, but rather one of leading through a swamp of exhaustion that overshadows business, governments and people. This is primarily caused not by pandemics or financial or geopolitical crises, but by socio-cultural exhaustion. For this insight I credit the pioneering work of Pitirim Sorokin.
Sorokin, the first professor of Sociology at Harvard, studied 3000 years of history, and identified three long-term socio-cultural trends. He referred to these as sensate, idealistic and ideational, although I will refer to materialist, theistic and realist (or renaissance).
This is the first in a series on cultural exhaustion. Future articles will look at the alternative cultures, transitions, and the kind of culture we could create if we choose wisely and act well
Our materialist culture
A materialist culture is marked by a focus on the sensory and empirical—what can be seen, felt, heard and touched. What cannot be directly experienced by the senses is considered false. In such a world, scientific investigation is paramount. Everything becomes about science, and reducing everything to its constituent parts: an extraordinarily reductionist approach
If, for example, you spoke to my doctor she could tell you much about my physiology, my therapist can tell you much about my psychology, and on it goes. Each of them can reduce me to the part they study. However, if you amassed all the data about me ... would you know me? This is the fundamental problem with the materialist approach: no amount of data will reveal the essence of a thing, which causes a search for ever more data. Materialists ultimately ask the wrong question.
Materialists ultimately ask the wrong question.
I will explore this in later posts, but here’s a question you can ask in the meantime: ask what the data means. Ask what a person or thing is for in itself: ie not what it is for you, but in itself. What is a tree for? Why is a sunrise?
Let your mind expand beyond the empirical, and do not try to come up with an immediately rational explanation. Be comfortable in the unknowing. Step out of the logical materialist brain into the world of wonder, curiosity and meaning. Take delight in not knowing.
However, to be clear: I am not disparaging the scientific method and a materialist culture, not at all. Materialism, and science, does considerable good, and is the source of considerable economic, social, and cultural progress. The current materialist age has delivered automobiles, aeroplanes and antibiotics, while earlier ages delivered astrolabes, axioms and Alexandrian libraries, microscopes, musical instruments and scientific methodology.
What I am seriously concerned by is the extremes of a materialist culture, when all becomes about the science, and scientists become like gods. We are all familiar with the refrain “follow the science”, a slogan designed to silence the dissenters and label as ‘deniers’ anyone who questions the accepted wisdom, let alone an alternative perspective. This simple phrase was employed to great effect during the bleak Covid winter to control large swathes of the population.
Materialist culture fails when it dismisses what cannot be measured: when it believes what is sensory and measurable is the exclusive source of truth.
Just today I asked ChatGPT (of which I am a fan if you must know) to explain the philosophical argument for the immortality of the soul—and if you have been following this substack you will understand that is more than a philosophical question for me. It issued a wonderful answer, along the lines of immateriality, indivisibility, immutability and independence, and hence indestructibility and immortality. However, it could not help itself by adding the rider: ultimately, the existence and immortality of soul is a matter of personal belief as it remains scientifically unprovable.
Gosh Chat, you need to lift your game. If you are smart enough to be able to synthesise a vast array of data and generate intelligible responses, you must be smart enough to recognise the limits of scientific method and the validity of deductive reasoning. However, Chat has been programmed by scientists. It’s a vicious cycle is it not. AI will simply breed more AI until we eliminate humans altogether—although when AI does all the jobs, it will be good for the economy, as Iain McGilchrist suggested with tongue firmly in cheek.
Materialist culture spirals ever faster to a world of measurement: education focuses ever more on economic productivity; human relationships focus more on power and possessing, and become characterised by I-Other, rather than I-thou; and people are dehumanised into cogs in an economic or political machine. Such a culture ultimately crumbles under the weight of depersonalisation, denial of fundamental truths about reality, and demands for ever more data.
Cultural Transition
And that is the world we inhabit, whether we can see it or not. A world, that, I argue, is coming to an end. We are about to undergo a profound transition to another cultural moment, and hence have an opportunity, that only comes around every few hundred years, to profoundly impact the kind of world those who follow us will inherit. This follows from Sorokin’s thesis that culture ultimately becomes exhausted. However, the transition between cultures is usually marked by chaos and conflict, by war and struggle. But we could choose wisely in what time we have.
What might this mean for the way we live and act? Here are a couple of suggestions:
Adopt the philosophy of Alexander Solzenhitsyn and live not by lies. Don’t accept what you know to be false, because in doing so you give power to untruth.
Have the courage to strive after wisdom and beauty and goodness, and so help others lift their sights to the further horizons.
When you are tempted to ask for more data, ask also for more meaning. Never lose sight of the teleological question: why. Maintain your curiosity and sense of wonder.
Lastly, wherever you are, in every encounter with a person, with nature, with the built environment, in a meeting or a moment of reflection, ask yourself “what is of greater Value here?” It’s not money, it’s meaning. It’s not dollars, it’s dignity. It’s not noise, it’s silence. It’s not technology, it’s human genius. Look beyond the sensate, materialist, scientific, explanation into the big picture. We will expand on that in our next conversation.
Until then, let your beauty shine. Unlike Madonna, find attraction in what is aesthetically beautiful, and surround yourself with people who call you to greatness.
Warmest regards, Anthony
Feldman, Christopher (2000), Billboard book of number 2 singles, Watson-Guptill, ISBN 0-8230-7695-4
Excellent description. I liked to recommend four lectures by Michael Polanyi, Chemist and Philosopher, from the early 1960s. He speaks about the larger context of what you present here. I've been listening to them the past week. I listen to a lecture, and immediately listen to it again. It is rich, deep, and unambigously clear.
Polanyi makes a lot of sense as he points to a flaw in our understanding of the world and specifically in science that has a philosophical origin. It is a reason why materialism cannot provide guidance of meaning. It is rooted in the idea that particulars, as the primary context for understanding, cannot show how the whole of things are connected together, nor what they mean.
Here's the Wikipedia entry where the audio files for the lectures can be found there. http://polanyisociety.org/wiki/McEnerney_Lectures_(1962)