The insatiable society: materialistic values and human needs.

With the easing of Cold War tensions between the superpowers, the threat of nuclear holocaust is apparently receding. Yet the earth remains imperiled. Even in the state we call peace, lamentably, our species makes war upon the living systems from which we arose and upon which we still depend

The materialistic appetite of Western civilization serves as the engine of our environmental destructiveness. It is, therefore, important to understand why it is that, having so much, we are still fast devouring the earth in our hunger for more.

The answer has two main dimensions. Part of the problem lies in the dynamic of market economies; part lies in our psychological/spiritual condition. Both perspective are necessary to illuminate the sources of our insatiability.

The Systemic Perspective

The ideology of the market economy has obscured the psychological problem of out addiction to wealth by teaching us that human beings are insatiable by nature and that limitless appetite, being natural, is good. "Economic Man" is presumed to have infinite wants, and economic theory would have us believe that the millionth dollar of a person's consumption is as valuable as the first. Wealth and human fulfillment have become equated in the predominant ideology of liberal society, even though the great spiritual teachers of humanity have all taught otherwise. The market has given us great blessings, but it has also in some ways put us on the wrong path.

The market shapes not only our image of human nature, but also the human reality within its grasp. The economic system shapes us by the rewards it offers, telling the person with musical gifts that it is of greater value to write songs that sell Coca-Cola than to follow in the path of Bach. The market shapes us also by its ceaseless messages fashioned to persuade us of the importance of the goods it provides, telling us that we are the car we drive and that manliness can be purchased in a pack of cigarettes.

If allowed to operate for generations in a cultural system, the market makes man in its own image. Just as the market is exquisitely sensitive to those things that can be bought and sold, but is unable to register the value of human bonds or the integrity of nature, so do people growing up in the market society tend to value the redwood picnic table over the forest cut down to make it and to choose career advancement over staying home to care for their infants. The human soul, like the earth itself, is turned into a resource for the market's endless push toward growth.