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There is more than stuff.

by Nicholas Barnard on April 11th, 2005

I’m surprised that in some way I’m sorry Pope John Paul II died. I’m not catholic, the closest I’ve ever got to there was that I was raised in a protestant church. For those of you who just said same difference, they’re not the same. Comparing a catholic and a protestant is like comparing a New Yorker and a Midwesterner. They both look up (or down as the case may be.) to the same government, media, etc. But really its a miracle Kansas and New York City are in the same country, let alone the same continent.

But one of the senses of loss is from knowing that we’ve lost a man who understood the nuances and downsides to both communism and capitalism. John Paul is credited with assisting with the downfall of communism. But, he also preached against excessive materialism.

I bought an iPod mini two Sundays ago. I felt, and to a lesser extent feel guilty for buying it. Why? Its not something I can justify as a necessity. Its a thing, a good, a slip into the trap of materialism.

I wonder if those who own huge mansions.. err houses are in general happy? (From a statistics standpoint they’re no happier than the next man.) See the thing is I’ve been there. I used to live in a $200,000 house (in the midwest) and quite frankly as a whole we were miserable.

I often wonder what people who make $43,000, $60,000 or $100,000 or $200,000 a year do with all that money? Its one thing if you’re raising kids and saving for retirement. But I’m convinced that I would do fine making $30-35k. I’m making about $25,000 a year and with the exception of some hefty debt payments (left over from when I spent more than I earned.) I’m really doing quite well.

What I worry about is that materialism leads to a sense of entitlement, i.e. “I earned the money to buy it, so its my right to buy it.” Related to this is “My job is worth this much to the company so I’m entitled to make at least that much.” This whole line of reasoning denies the interdependence that we all share. Its nearly impossible today to be purely independent. Every profession relies upon other professions and each of us is ultimately dependent on one and other. Additionally by being purely money driven you deny other benefits not to mention that a job well done should be its own reward.

Back to the Pope. I’d love to believe that perfect communism would work. Unfortunately communism fails to account for the varied intents of people. Capitalism leads to materialism and ultimately greed. (e.g. Worldcom, Enron — Both of these companies could have been perfectly ethical, profitable ventures, instead unchecked greed led to massive fraud and ultimately collapse.)

What does this mean for an individual? Simple, there are more things to the word than money and greed (while it sometimes can be a positive motivator) ultimately greed has costs that outweigh any money that you could earn.

Now time to go home and practice some discardia

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  • http://www.opus95.com Marshall

    Oops, for some reason my spybot did not see any updates here after 5 April until just now…
    Re “perfect communism,” you know, one of the most interesting facets of Lenin’s career was how frequently he counseled people that the development of socialism and, ultimately, communism would be a long and very protracted affair of many decades or more, characterized by frequent experiments and a variety of political forms and economic methods in different countries. He also predicted that – from the standpoint of socialism – Russia would one day again be a backward nation and might even be “reduced to slavery” again, before the worldwide victory of communism. “We were never utopians.” he wrote in 1919, “and never imagined that we would build communist society with the immaculate hands of immaculate communists, born and educated in an immaculately communist society. That is a fairy tale. We have to build communism out of the debris of capitalism, and only the class which has been steeled in the struggle against capitalism can do that.”
    I can easily imagine a Marxist-Leninist society in which only the most absolutely necessary core components of the economy (health care, housing, food procurement/distribution, education) are socialized in some fashion (perhaps only subject to strict legal guidelines of some sort) and all the rest of the economy is left unencumbered for whatever activities people care to develop aside from their social obligations (which might also only be primarily taxes). For me, the only absolutely essential requirement for socialism is accepting the fact that – however one may choose to fund and administer the system – people have inalienable human rights to health care, housing, nourishment, and education. Multiply that by 190 countries on earth, all united in a single world legislature (executive, judiciary), and there you have my vision of “perfect communism,” at least in its earliest stage. It doesn’t sound anything at all to me like the incredibly frightening and crushing soul-destructive dictatorship we have all been taught to expect; it sounds more like an enormous liberation of human potential and the end of war between nations for all time. But anti-communist propaganda wouldn’t be anti-communist propaganda if it didn’t paint the most repugnant-possible picture of the class enemy, now would it?
    It’s all only fantasizing, of course, since we all “know” communism has been proven a failure and defeated for all time by the noble warriors Reagan and Wojtyla. Woo-hoo! Shhh, don’t tell anyone 20% of the world’s people are still living under a communist party in the decades-long most dynamically growing economy in the world – or that they are holding almost $700 billion in US Treasury notes … in reserve.
    Don’t breathe a word about the crushing malnourished poverty at least 1300 million live under in Africa, southern Asia, and Latin America.
    Don’t tell anyone the US government throws $2 billion more onto its now $7.8 trillion debt every single day of the year. (This, by the party that made itself famous stomping up and down and waving its arms and screaming about “tax-and-spend Democrats” and how they were ruining this great republic with their spendthrift ways.)
    Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
    Perfect communism is a pipe-dream.