{"id":2453440,"date":"2020-01-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=319404"},"modified":"2020-01-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-20T07:00:00","slug":"paul-andersen-positive-materialism-and-plasticizing-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/paul-andersen-positive-materialism-and-plasticizing-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Andersen: Positive materialism and plasticizing people"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After years of excoriating \u201cmaterialism\u201d as the cause of the consumer religion that underscores mainstream American values, I was wrong. Materialism is good.<\/p>\n

I learned this from Alan Watts, a Zen master, Beat philosopher and acerbic social critic. Watts defended the virtues of materialism in his book, \u201cWhat Does It Matter?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe commonly accepted notion that Americans are materialists is pure bunk,\u201d Watts wrote in 1968. \u201cA materialist is one who loves material, a person devoted to the enjoyment of the physical and immediate present. By this definition, most Americans are abstractionists. They hate material and convert it as swiftly as possible into mountains of junk and clouds of poisonous gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watts was a leading intellectual voice in England who wrote thoughtful, amusing critiques of the changing times during the rise of the counter-culture in the 1960s. That\u2019s when I came of age, which explains a lot about the views I foment here.<\/p>\n

It was Watt\u2019s view of materialism that set me straight \u2014 that and being upbraided by a friend who said I was a Scrooge for writing a column lampooning the gross excess of the holiday spending orgy known as Christmas.<\/p>\n

Watts was right about mountains of trash that today threaten to overwhelm landfills and are proliferating microplastics through our air, water and food. As landfills in the U.S. reach over capacity with our junk, we humans are ingesting microplastics in unprecedented volumes.<\/p>\n

It is only a matter of time until humans ingest so much plastic that those lucky enough to survive will adapt and evolve to incorporate plastics into their organism, converting humanity from organic to inorganic as fully plasiticized hybrid life forms.<\/p>\n

Plasticization may not extend our lifespans, but it will certainly preserve our corpses, which will be as indestructible as a Styrofoam cup. What a stunning achievement! Crematoriums will either require scrubbers so that immolating plasticized human remains will not further toxify the planet or be forced to recycle corpses.<\/p>\n

I was not alone in considering the addiction to materialism rampant at the holidays. The New York Times reported on Christmas Eve that \u201cthe mass devaluation of things has not caused us to buy less.\u201d Rather, said the Times, it causes us to buy more.<\/p>\n

If we constantly devalue the stuff in our lives because it has gotten old, we will want new stuff to feel truly good. And if there\u2019s one unifying truth today, it is that new stuff is better than old stuff.<\/p>\n

As the new stuff comes in, the old stuff goes out to the landfills where it converts into microplastics, which then reside in perpetuity deep within our guts.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u201d suggested the Times, \u201cit seems that we are buying more, but the things we buy hold less value for us. The accumulation of things is still at the essence of what it means to be American.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thorstein Veblen described this in \u201cTheory of the Leisure Class,\u201d where he satirized consumerism by coining the expression \u201cconspicuous consumption.\u201d Veblen wrote in 1899: \u201cThe basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.\u201d<\/p>\n

Veblen goes a step further, saying that, above and beyond conspicuous consumption is \u201cconspicuous waste,\u201d the next level in pecuniary strength. If that\u2019s not enough, Veblen said, one\u2019s social status really rises by wasting human labor, which is the ultimate definition of wealth and prestige.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conspicuously wasteful honorific expenditure,\u201d Veblen writes, \u201cmay become more indispensable than much of that expenditure which ministers to the lower wants of physical well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n

We need to become better materialists, urged the Times: \u201cRekindling our love of things may be the key to saving the planet. When we purchase things we value from both an ethical and sentimental standpoint, we are more likely to preserve them even when they are defunct or no longer in vogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

If we wish to be good materialists, we must attach ourselves permanently to our stuff. That would mean consuming more plastics to become the material we love. At least it might keep it out of the oceans.<\/p>\n

Paul Andersen\u2019s column appears on Mondays. He may be reached at andersen@rof.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After years of excoriating \u201cmaterialism\u201d as the cause of the consumer religion that underscores mainstream American values, I was wrong. Materialism is good. I learned this from Alan Watts, a Zen master, Beat philosopher and acerbic social critic. Watts defended the virtues of materialism in his book, \u201cWhat Does It Matter?\u201d \u201cThe commonly accepted notion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2453440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 20:07:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}