Have we become programmed to be "too materialistic"?

I don't think you can make generalizations like that. For one, the "East vs West" thing reeks of orientalism to me. There's no lack of materialism in Asia - there's a strong idea of "face" in pretty much all East Asian countries. South Korea is the leader in plastic surgery for a reason.

There's many minimalist movements in the US, and there's hoarders in Japan.

None of the East Asian countries are particularly communist or socialist - in many ways, the Asian Tigers (and pre-Xi China) were more hyper-capitalist than the US.

To be more specific: Japan is a small island country (especially when compared to the US), so the Japanese have to be VERY mindful of space; whereas America has TONS of space, so people keep buying crap to fill said space.

Americans seem to say this a lot, but as an English person I'm not sure I buy it. The UK is about two thirds of the size of Japan and I've never encountered the idea that we have to be VERY mindful of space. Our homes are still full of junk, our kids still have too many toys (last time I saw my nephew he was literally complaining about having "thousands"). Granted it takes a lot less crap to fill our homes, but we still do without much thought, we're far from a nation of minimalists.

Not that I buy Japan being a nation of minimalists, either. They have capsule machines literally everywhere selling plastic crap, and anime figurines were a huge thing before the funkopop craze hit "the west". Pure clutter. Then there are the charms and accessories, I even saw a woman with a little keyring-type-thing hanging from the strap of her facemask when I was there recently.

Anyway, to your actual point, we absolutely are culturally programmed to be materialistic, and the majority of people probably would be happier owning less, but I think that's a red herring that pales in comparison to the problem of being disconnected from community. The west vs east philosophy seems much more about individual responsibility vs community responsibility. And it cuts both ways, the overbearing Asian parent who insists their child become a doctor when that makes them miserable is the mirror of the American who thinks people in poverty should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps because "I didn't need any help and I'm just fine".

100% yes!

Consumerism is one of the great evils of this world that is socially acceptable.

I believe that in order for the human race to survive, every single person needs to adapt to more of what I call a “frontier” mindset. Imagine you lived on the frontier (picture the American frontier), how would your expectations around everything shift?

• You would choose to repair things instead of replace with new
• While you may have access to supply lines, they would be limited, so you would garden and forage more, and only buy goods when you couldn’t grow, forage or make it yourself.
• Special events wouldn’t be focused on buying a ton of decorations, but instead would be focused on the experience of celebrating the event or person
• Because of your reliance on the environment around you (for gardening/etc), you would become more in tune with nature, and thus respect and care for it more as a steward.
• you would choose products that last, and are made locally, as opposed to shitty products made halfway across the world.
• you wouldn’t travel as much
• you would rely heavily on your local community, neighbors, etc.
• and more!

Now apply that mindset to the current modern “Western” lifestyle. We can in fact keep modern amenities like air conditioning, phones, etc and make this work.

Imagine if everyone changed their mindset to this at a very basic level - even if it wasn’t a full on hippy dippy adoption of this approach by each person, the systems that currently exist would be reshaped into much more sustainable and positive systems.

Is this possible? I actually think so.

Is it likely? I actually also think that it inevitably is. But I don’t think it will be by choice.

I don’t think the majority of people will give up their dopamine driven habits by choice. I personally think that the deepening climate crisis, constricting food supplies, forced migrations, energy issues, etc are going to be the things that incrementally force more and more people closer to this “frontier” way of life over the next few centuries.

In his speech "The Tree Evils of Society" Dr. King states the following

The second aspect of our afflicted society is extreme materialism. An Asian writer has portrayed our dilemma in candid terms, he says, “you call your thousand material devices labor saving machinery, yet you are forever busy. With the multiplying of your machinery, you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have you want more and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else. Your devices are neither time saving nor soul saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business”.

This tells us something about our civilization that cannot be caste aside as a prejudiced charge by an eastern thinker who is jealous of Western prosperity. We cannot escape the indictment. This does not mean that we must turn back the clock of scientific progress. No one can overlook the wonders that science has wrought for our lives. The automobile will not abdicate in favor of the horse and buggy or the train in favor of the stagecoach or the tractor in favor of the handplow or the scientific method in favor of ignorance and superstition.

But our moral lag must be redeemed; when scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly maximize the minimum and minimize the maximum we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. It is this moral lag in our thing-oriented society that blinds us to the human reality around us and encourages us in the greed and exploitation which creates the sector of poverty in the midst of wealth.

Again we have diluted ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad. If Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy, they will forever be poor, giving their energies, their talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return.

The way to end poverty is to end the exploitation of the poor, ensure them a fair share of the government services and the nation’s resources. I proposed recently that a national agency be established to provide employment for everyone needing it. Nothing is more socially inexcusable than unemployment in this age. In the 30s, when the nation was bankrupt it instituted such an agency, the WPA, in the present conditions of a nation glutted with resources, it is barbarous to condemn people desiring work to soul sapping inactivity and poverty. I am convinced that even this one, massive act of concern will do more than all the state police and armies of the nation to quell riots and still hatreds.

The tragedy is our materialistic culture does not possess the statesmanship necessary to do it. Victor Hugo could have been thinking of 20th Century America when he wrote, “there’s always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher classes”. The time has come for America to face the inevitable choice between materialism and humanism. We must devote at least as much to our children’s education and the health of the poor as we do to the care of our automobiles and the building of beautiful, impressive hotels. We must also realize that the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.

Keep in mind that this was written in the 60's. While I disagree with some of his points, I feel that his criticism of materialism hits the mark.

When a person in a Scandanavian country says "I don't have much and I'm happier for it." I don't know if it's that they're necessarily less materialistic as much as their main material needs are being reliably met.

In the US there's definitely a highly materialistic consumer culture, but also many people are living a step away from poverty and are intentionally kept struggling so they always feel that material need, even if it's misdirected in many ways. American advertisers sell products as supposed solutions to the problems in your life, but people would realize they don't need much if their actual needs of food, shelter and healthcare were met by default.

American culture is supremely undignified in this way. A bunch of people who have had their best values snd tendencies of resourcefulness, independence and self-sufficiency hi-jacked to make them act against their own best interests out of some misguided sense of virtue.

I think of myself as a highly materialistic person: I form strong emotional connections to things, and I like to surround myself with said things.

However, this does not make me consumerist. My sentimentality toward objects leads to me to generally prefer old, familiar things over new things. It also means I strongly prefer things I've made, things that have been given to me, or things that I have found over things that I buy. When something I love is wearing out, I will repair it over and over and over again, rather than throw it out and buy a replacement. And I feel the strongest connection to things I interact with frequently over things I interact with infrequently. When I do buy something, I have learned to research and invest strictly in items that will last, so as to avoid having my heart broken later.

Meanwhile, I don't like things in my home that I don't feel attached to. I find them aesthetically displeasing. They dilute the comfy feeling that my more beloved items give me. They make my life feel hectic and out of my control. This quirk keeps my life simpler, because it seems that there is a limit to how many things I can feel an intimate connection to: a kind of Dunbar's number of objects, which inevitably preferences things I use a lot over things I rarely use.

I do not have any subscription services, other than necessary utilities and related services (such as my phone and internet plan), because the more of them I have, the more hectic and out-of-control my life feels. It's too much to track, and it takes away from the cozy, safe feeling I get from intimately knowing everything I have.

Human have always been greedy. This is why kings collected gold and other materialistic goods available back then.

Capitalism is no different. However, with how fast information travels with current technology, this is becoming a widespread phenomenon. Technology/information/social media is not a root cause of today’s materialistic trend, but it certainly contributed a huge part of it.

I think greed has always been part of human civilization everywhere. It's always been considered immoral and it's always been demonized to some extent, but it's always there - there are always greedy people wanting more. However, I'll admit that certain forms of greed (especially forms that follow the rules of our current economic structure) are often justified and defended by many. Further, the West (and especially the U.S., more recently) have enjoyed a kind of materialistic wealth that has allowed those ever-present greedy elements to gain more than ever thought possible.

But ultimately, I'm not really sure this is an "East vs. West" thing. I studied Philosophy in college. I also took some courses in Eastern and Indian philosophy because I found it all so fascinating. I'm actually a bit hesitant to conclude they're all wildly different. Sure, sometimes they had unique ideas, of course. But sometimes our perceptions of what Western or Eastern philosophies are, are really just perceptions of what's well-known or popular. There are some interesting ideas in Western philosophy that seem almost like the Dao in Daoism, or interesting parallels in things like a Gnostic view of a "smiling Jesus" compared to the "smiling Buddha".

Anyway, I'm not sure any of this matters. If "the East" wasn't materialistic, they are now. Whether that's something "the West" exported - that it's somehow unnatural for "the East" - I can't say. The United States is seen as one of the most materialistic and consumerist cultures. But you know, it wasn't really always that way. We've just been flooded with so much wealth that we've forgotten who we were. I think the same is happening elsewhere, too. I don't think other cultures have entirely forgotten what's actually important. I think other countries haven't experienced the insane wealth of the U.S. and so haven't been blinded by it. In fact, I think that's really the crux of this discussion. I think most cultures would have similar issues as the U.S. if they'd had a string of such remarkable luck and wealth for nearly 100 years.

Perhaps more importantly, I'd like to point out the difference between materialism and consumerism. I think disregarding material wealth is a fool's errand. Material wealth matters. I think everyone having access to technology that objectively improves human lives is a good thing. But as another commenter said, it should be repairable, it should be built by our communities, it should be built to last, and the supply line should be ethical and ecologically-aware. I don't think we need a new phone every year, I don't think everyone needs five TVs, I don't think everyone needs 3+ cars, I don't think we should integrate brands into our personal identities, and I don't think we should obsess over the newest product no one needs.

And as I examine these philosophies, I have to ask "Is owning less ACTUALLY a bad idea?"

I think it depends on what. I live in a townhouse community. Many people own ladders. We needed an especially tall ladder one year and instead of going out and buying one, we asked the community and someone let us borrow their very nice tall ladder. That is a case where owning less is a nice idea. Public libraries and "tool libraries" are also good cases of owning less.

However in the case of software, I don't see this being a good trend. For one, software is created once and then distributed across many; it's not a finite resource. The SaaS trend seems like mostly greed to me. For example, I'm currently paying a monthly subscription to Lucidchart. I hate doing that. I would much rather buy a specific version of their software once and own that version. I'd much rather pay extra for a new version if they have a new feature that my old version doesn't have. Lucidchart doesn't want that though; that would mean they'd have to actually continuously make better software. It's much easier and more profitable to force customers to pay a monthly or yearly fee as an expectation and conveniently offer little expectations in terms of improved software. I think SaaS for Lucidchart is super stupid, it's a chart drawing software!

The only software where SaaS makes sense is where the software needs to use cloud or some other type of backend that the software company must continually pay to maintain. (Which Lucidchart arguably does, it saves my charts "to the cloud," but it's not like I want that! I would much rather just have a standalone Lucidchart program with Lucidchart files locally on my computer.)

When trying to understand misery in western countries, it's impotent to take note of various philosophies kind of like you've done. It's also important to note capitalism and humanism do not get along. They defeat one another.

Simply put, capitalism has won here in the west. The United States was both a refuge for religious extremists and a continuation of industry run amock in Europe. It was a religious and capitalistic venture. Not much room for human rights.

It's one of the few countries that has gone all in into capitalism, hasn't had a class revolution, and has matured so much that it would be kind of impossible to have a French Revolution style of class war in the first place.

We also haven't decoupled from religion as those roots run pretty deep too.

So if capitalism is up, and human rights are down, it's no wonder we are miserable.

You could also throw in philosophical maturity of which we have very little of as well. The east developed various philosophies like fielty and minimalism as thinly disguised ideologies that placate the masses and make them more easy to be controlled. I always sneer at the metric of happiness because I come from a third world country where people live in landfills and smile about it.

That's not a good thing, that's just an ignorant person further beat into complacency by being happy with what little they have.

That just benefits those in power even more. Not only did you take everything from the poor but they're happy about it and have been defeated enough so they accept their lot.

The caste system in India is sort of like this, the toxic work culture in Japan is like this, hell most of their culture revolves around the need for dedicated and specialized roles and that's accepted because of teachings on humility, fealty, and being content with nothing through teachings that vilify the ego.

One can argue those philosophies are healthy, I would agree, and the people are happy, I can agree there too, but I can also argue there are those that exploit those benevolent teachings for the controlling mechanisms they are.

Here in the west control is achieved through religion (US and South America). Humility and to be like Jesus, poor and simple and happy about it because your wealth is in heaven. It's just another method of control so you're okay with the "sinner" driving his Ferrari up and down the street.

Are we programed to be materialistic? Yes. That's because there's no community here, no heart here, no humanism here, no philosophy. Money is God and we're miserable for it, but to paint the east as happier as a result, eh there's room for discussion there.

Of course we've been programmed. There's entire divisions to it called "Marketing and Advertising."

If we didn't have a constant flow of advertising churning into our faces, and only can find things that we seek out....there would still be a bit of "keeping up with the Jone's," but it would be much more organic and far less in quantity.

You’re taking an abstract philosophical approach but I think “rent versus own” decisions can be made pragmatically.

In an emergency, there are things you physically want with you. For example, I wouldn’t want to have to rent a car or rely on car-sharing during an evacuation. Cars may be unavailable. It might mean leaving lots of stuff behind. During an evacuation, people sometimes have to leave behind pets if they’re leaving by bus.

But there are also good reasons to travel light. Driving in a foreign country can be a major hassle, and tourist infrastructure is very developed. It often is very feasible to rely heavily on services provided by others and not haul a lot of stuff around. You can decide not to have your own pets and enjoy visiting other people who have pets.

Thinking about it practically, you don’t get a choice about whether to rely on others, but you usually get to make choices about how much. Even if you went off the grid and grew your own food, you’re still going to be buying hardware and will sometimes rely on others for medical services.

These decisions depend on age and health. As you get older you will be relying on other people more and more, for just about everything. It would be good to avoid depending entirely on strangers.

Even for digital stuff, there are tradeoffs. If you have your own music collection and are good at making backups, you probably don’t have to worry about a song disappearing, like videos often disappear on YouTube. But it’s very reasonable to get a music subscription and live with transience. Some songs might be lost, but there are other songs. You get more variety and don’t need to maintain a music collection. (Or you can make your own music.)

I think pondering these things in an abstract way is less helpful than thinking about how flexible you want to be about how you live, and how much maintenance you are comfortable doing, and then making decisions about specific things in your life.

(I guess that’s still philosophical, but it’s a philosophy of pragmatism.)

You buy things whether you need them or not. You probably don't need to own much, but property and consumer rights are fundamental for a reason.

We continue to see more businesses move towards capturing rent, rather than creating value, and that locks people into a strange, feudal state of existence, where they own nothing. Since we need tools and space, among other things, to provide for ourselves in this system, we are borked if we now pay a forever percentage on everything, just to get by. None of these companies are your friend, and their end goal is to extract as much profit from you as possible. This is not a productive conversation about anti-consumerism when you include tools people use for their job, such as tractors, cars, and software that never gets fixed while striving to replace you.

Materialism and Spiritualism are like two poles of Philosophy and life generally cycles between these two extremes like a Pendulum. Right now, human civilization in general is moving from Spiritualism to Materialism, this is the route that eventually leads to what you call "en-shitification". Of course, the pendulum will eventually shift back but sometimes it might take a huge cataclysmic event for that to happen, the kind that ended the dark ages and started the renaissance probably.

One of the first signs of materialism is atheism, people moving entirely away from religious dogma and a life of principles and ethics. Of course, not all things in theology was good, things like witch hunting, genuflection, some practices of the church, etc. were horrible. But mankind has already discarded these things long time ago and that wasn't done by today's atheist folks, that was done by those who ushered in the age of renaissance and skepticism, and paved the way for the industrial revolution that eventually happened in the 18th century.

While atheism can be good as a philosophical branch of academic interest, it can have ill-effects on society and people when taken too seriously in life. An athiest's mindset or belief system rules out and rejects the existence of anything outside of the materially observable universe including soul or a belief in afterlife, which in turn leads that mindset to act on pure hedonistic or pleasure principle. In other words, pleasure and gratification of the self is the only thing that matters. What would prevent such mindset from doing robbery and rapes except for the fear of law or the legal system? This pleasure principle is what eventually paves the way for crony capitalism or what you call en-shitification.

What is the solution to this? It's highly unpopular and anger inviting opinion in today's society to suggest that moving back to at least spiritualism (if not religion) can do some good in this situation, yet that's my stand.