Materialism, Consumerism, and the Paradox of Global Trade

A Meditation from the Good Will drop-off line

Yesterday, while in a huge car line at Good Will, I once again got thinking about the paradox of our current issues with the economy and global trade. You see for years, I’ve been saying that global capitalism has gotten us into a very difficult situation in relation to our overconsumption; a habit that is contributing to planetary destruction and the dehumanization of work and our economy.

On the one hand, as seen by cart after cart of stuff being wheeled into the Good Will warehouse, we obviously have way too much stuff. On the other, should we stop buying stuff, millions of people whose jobs depend on the stuff will be thrown out of work and our economy will grind to a halt.

This is the paradox of what’s currently going on in our world.

You see I’d be perfectly fine with stopping boatload after boatload of junk being shipped all over the world. But what’s not fine is what happens to those who are trapped in the world of consumer consumption and production, those who will lose their livelihoods and their ability to care for themselves and their families.

This problem is really no different than all of the problems of Empire, which in turn are the problems of the ego process. Ego projects are projects of endless consumption and acquisition. There is no sense of enough, there is no sense of space, the priority is always about maintaining and enhancing material existence. Under this process, the few restrict the free access to basic needs so that they can force the many to work for them and their Imperial designs.

It’s hard to imagine a world in which basic needs are freely accessible. Yet we need to acknowledge that for most of human history, certainly until very recently in the Americas, this was the state of affairs. In the Pacific Northwest (PNW) where I currently live, the free abundance of the local ecology provided everything that people needed to live well - all they had to do was hunt, fish, harvest and build. In fact by the time the Age of Exploration began in Europe in the 16th Century, the standard of living of peoples in the PNW far exceeded that of the average person in London or any other major European city.

What would you do with your day if access to food and housing available in this manner? Would we actually want to work anywhere in the industrial ‘stuff’ supply chain? Or would we prefer to spend our extra time doing art, or in prayer, or caring for one another, or going for a walk or a hike, or simply sitting somewhere nice?

You see the priority of the spiritual life is not material, but rather is non-material: not in the sense of getting to heaven after you die, but rather of letting go of material absorption, of material accumulation, so that we can be in the world in a loving, peaceful way.

But here’s the catch: everyone in such a society is “poorer” because the idea of accumulation of capital is gone and there is a recognition of enough.

For me, the current question isn’t about how to get the container ship rolling again, it’s about how to humanize our society: how to meet basic needs and free everyone from every bond.

This would be a world with far less suffering, but it might also be a world without a stock market, without billionaires, or even millionaires. Thus in order to create such a world, we need a complete transformation of our focus, our energy, and thus the basic nature of our mind.