American Materialism

Richard Schmitt, a local book author who also often writes in Worcester's alternative newspaper InCity Times, and whose writing I greatly admire, wrote to me about a blog entry I posted on my website on July 4th titled “I am an American”. Richard noted that the piece sounded more like propaganda than fair-minded commentary. As I am often circumspect or critical about many aspects of American culture, I thought a 4th of July piece recognizing the many strengths of the U.S was appropriate.
However, Richard’s comments did inspire me to layout what I consider some of our country’s more serious short-comings. The biggest weakness in the American way of life, to me, is how we judge life’s success: generally in terms of money and material acquisitions. Worse yet, is the unspoken belief that the harmful moral affects of U.S style capitalism do not affect our collective soul. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our people’s pursuit of individuation is in many ways completely admirable. The creative spirit, individual initiative, personal responsibility, can-do attitude and inherent optimism that we carry with us daily is completely admirable. Some of the selfish effects our individualism carries with it are not. Often times, our rugged individualism becomes a little too jagged for our own good – or rather - for anyone else’s. The person who “dies with the most” at the end of one’s life does not win. Does any fully conscious, thoughtful person really think that Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, or even Bill Gates in his cut-throat, pre-philanthropist days are to be admired (Google probably named their “Do no harm” campaign directly at Microsoft’s vibe).
As a value judgment, how much money one earns often displaces how much one contributes to the world. Whether one has a house on “the Cape” often replaces whether one has truly found the good life. One’s “ride” is often valued over whether you “took someone for a ride.” The point is that the U.S. style capitalism encourages us to value going for oneself too much without trying to bring others along with us.
We end judging our life’s work not on being an educated human being who contributes greatly to the world, but instead measuring our life’s value in the possessions we have personally acquired. (A few Americans, with a less Western world ostentation, say we should not judge at all and just be, as life is not a competition, or a push against limits but an experience of simply “being.”)
This is our American Achilles’ heel: the power of acquisition is substituted for – and subsumes – the power of contribution. We pursue taking and having too much, giving and experiencing too little. We need to re-evaluate and adjust our desires if we are to make the self-sacrifices required to keep us strong.

This is Randy Feldman on WCRN’s Midday Report, every Tuesday at 12:50 past noon and every Friday
noon to 1:00pm with Hank Stolz and Brian Herr.