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Stuff and Values

December 7, 2007 · Posted in blog

Very curiously, the shift toward consumption and “progress” as primary driving values of our society, which results in us throwing away 90% of the products we purchase in a matter of 6 months (in the US at least), and which came about in the 1950s, conincides with a begin of a declining happinness in our society as well.
Stuff does not make happy, as much as the 3000 or so advertisements each US citizen is in average targeted with per day try and persuade you. Stuff is just that. Stuff. When you don’t have it and are told you should, you are unhappy. When you finally decide to get it (oftentimes not even with disposable income, but with fake money generated by credit card companies), then you immediately fall into post-purchase dissonance (ever wondered why many product manufacturers are so eager to congratulate you on your purchase?), and worse, your mind will immediately jump to the next thing you don’t yet have and for which you have a perceived lack. So where is there any room for happinness?
It seems that happinness is rather ephemeral. Heard a saying once that said “Happinness is not getting what you want, but wanting what you have”. Think there is a difference between happinness and joy. Think happinness might be the result of getting what you want, but joy comes from a deeper place. It comes from a place of gratitude, where you realize how amazing it is to be here, to experience, to have sensory input to play with. It comes from being authentically creative, from loving, from doing what each of us is here to do (see the idea of dharma in one of my prior posts).
Stuff won’t help much in that regard. And stuff is what is killing us and is making our survival on this planet a rather dubious outlook…
If you want to learn more about stuff, check out this most excellent 20 minute video. Think it is one of the best I have seen on the topic… The Story of Stuff
One great point the movie makes is that the core issue is in our value system. Accepting consumption as a value is accepting death. Think about it: when you consume something, it is gone. Done. Finito. In the old days, they used to have a diagnostic called “consumption”: it was the slow death by withering away… If we do not replace consumption with creativity, we shall soon have consumed ourselves on this planet. It’s time to change our value systems back to consciousness and creativity: Toward becoming ever more aware, piercing through the layers of dullness our last fifty years of overstimulation have provided us with, really feel again, fully experience again, focus on the experiences of joy and love, replacing lack and fear, and toward becoming ever more creative, expressing our experience of being here using each of our unique set of talents and gifts. That will bring joy, not more stuff…