The Evolution of Economical Obsession - How Greed Consumes Our Culture

In an age where our ego is our life, it's unsurprising that the main drive throughout society is money. Money is what fuels our ego, what allows us to but our extravagant cars and fashionable clothing that, apparently, define our personality. Money is what gives us permission to show the rest of the world that we are 'superior' to our fellow man; or so we've been told, that is. But how did we get to this? How have we 'progressed' from the olden day family orientated attitudes and beliefs of togetherness and preservation to the self-centered, money infatuated values that we hold in modern society?

Let's start from the beginning shall we? From the moment we reach the pre-operational stages of childhood, we are undergoing the 'crucial' training that will allow us to sustain a job and earn the income that will support us for the remainder of our lives. We are dumped in preschools and day-cares from as early as 2 years old to allow us to adjust to the interaction of our fellow toddlers and gradually adapt to the early stages of the education system. From then, we go onto elementary school, where we are learning the skills necessary to survive secondary school, which in turn prepares us for university or further education. The survivors are then handed a degree or certificate and forced to seek employment, but at the end of the day, we are all abruptly thrust out into the workplace to earn what little currency is left untouched by 'the big dogs' of the industrial world. In short, our interest in money sparks at a young age and as we grow, manifests into an overwhelming obsession.

It's not just our innocent, childhood curiosity that is to blame for our infatuation. We all want to feel superior to the everyday man. We buy new clothes and furnish our houses with money we don't have so people can look at us at think, 'Wow, they really know what they're doing with their life, don't they'. Every time someone other than ourself is complimented on materialistic possessions, our ego comes into play. We always want to be better than everyone else. We are not satisfied with being second best. The fact of the matter is, that few seconds of euphoria achieved by trying on your new Ralph Lauren jacket for the first time is infinitely more satisfying than, say, sampling the greatest Italian cuisine or sniffing the best rose. We crave capitalism because it's the only means of escape from the Great Depression that is our lives. We live content in a society ruled by money as opposed to the people because it allows us to feel at ease within ourself... we have become numb to the negligence of nobleness. 

We are never truly happy; our obsession with money is evident of this. We suffer delusions of self-satisfaction because it's the only thing that separates us from insanity. By creating the illusion of happiness, we fill the emptiness inside accumulated by years of neglect and subliminal self-loathing. This is why we shop, drink and gamble.

See Also: Why we use drugs.

See Also: Why we lie.

Perhaps our economical obsession is just a brief phase in the course of humanities' evolution. After all, we are the only species that exhibits traits of greed and self-centered behavior. Sure, some animals consume more food than they may need and others may attract more sexual partners than necessary, but these traits would be acknowledged as gluttony at most! Furthermore, these attitudes towards wealth were far less prominent a few hundreds years ago. In Elizabethan times, it was a simple matter of the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. Society was divided into the working class and the aristocrats. I could divulge an entire blog post dedicated to the 'classless society' we live in (in fact, I already have), but we'd be digressing from the main point if I were to do so in this article. 

No matter how far our fetish for fortune evolves, we will never be satisfied. The simple fact alone that we are no happier than we were during the mid-20th century, despite the huge increase in personal wealth. It seems people have been trying to buy their own happiness and they are finding out the hard way that this act is impossible. Finally, let me end on a quote by the political theorist, Clive Hamilton, from his economical eudaimonistic, the Growth Fetish: 'People buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, to impress people they don't like'... There; I think that quite adequately sums up the article, don't you?


As always, keep your mind open and your legs closed.
xoxo
Gossip Brad