Material value

[Rastafari]

Anthropologists used to claim that Man was seperate from the lower animals because he could use tools, now we know they are dirty goddam liars.

Regardless, in Mesolithic and Neolithic cultures especially (including ones still thriving in many parts of the world), tools like Axes, Awls, Bows, and what-have-you all held prime significance. In many of these ancient cultures, these objects of industry and war were venerated as sacred things. I guess this worship of the material was necessitated partly by their direct use in order to survive, but as early money systems emerged and social heirarchy emerged, the love for these objects (and their utility in celebration) became more important their usefullness on the order of surviving dropped. With objects in Aztec cultures like solid golden cutting devices, one can clearly see the loss of practical value and more of a symbolicly powerful image attached. The same thing occured in North America, but to much less expressable extent.

Anyway, technoligical changes in objects that made a farmer able to earn a living only made him more endeared to that device, and so forth.


It is clearly totally and unobjectionably wrong to have any specific need to love a material object, but how does this apply when that object is something you depend on for life?

[praxis1966]

I think that within the context of those ancient primitive societies you mentioned, any personal or religious attachment to those objects can be excused. I don't think you can fault someone who was born thousands of years before the advent of modern logic and the scientific method.

Within the context of modern society, I do believe that such an attachment is inexcusable. In the United States, for example, money is critical for survival. Science and rationality have suffieciently enlightened us to the point that resorting to such gross materialism can be considered nothing other than barbaric by modern standards. We know realize that while certain things are necessary for survival (food, water, shelter, clothing, etc), we should have had enough time to place a higher value on other things; love, selflessness, knowledge. I think it's safe to say that in this current socio-political stage of development, we would all commonly acknowledge that life's intangiables are of a much higher purpose than modes of survival.

We're too good, or at least we should be, for placing any emphasis on objects other than what they are: objects.

[Rastafari]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2003, 03:07 AM
I think that within the context of those ancient primitive societies you mentioned, any personal or religious attachment to those objects can be excused. I don't think you can fault someone who was born thousands of years before the advent of modern logic and the scientific method.

Within the context of modern society, I do believe that such an attachment is inexcusable. In the United States, for example, money is critical for survival. Science and rationality have suffieciently enlightened us to the point that resorting to such gross materialism can be considered nothing other than barbaric by modern standards. We know realize that while certain things are necessary for survival (food, water, shelter, clothing, etc), we should have had enough time to place a higher value on other things; love, selflessness, knowledge. I think it's safe to say that in this current socio-political stage of development, we would all commonly acknowledge that life's intangiables are of a much higher purpose than modes of survival.

We're too good, or at least we should be, for placing any emphasis on objects other than what they are: objects.
but see, I don't regard money as something critical to survival. You can live long enough to reproduce with no money at all, and that's all that really matters in the end.

Why would these early peoples not be at fault, then? They had a sense of material worship side-by-side with a love of their fellow men. They often put this material value over the lives of their companions.

I agree about objects being objects, but I think some have a higher significance placed on them than others because of their utility.

and wouldn't any society that put a man away for robbing a bank technically be more transfixed on material than personal?

[praxis1966]

What I was saying is that the real basic necessity in this country is money, which is used to purchase the means of survival. This, perhaps, is why so many people become attached to it instead of the things they can buy with it. It represents the possibility of property. Besides, my argument was that we have reached (or at least I hope we have) some form of consciousness in which we realize that material worship is ultimately wrong.

In other words, don't you find it disgusting that people have such strong fetishes for jewelery? After all, it's nothing but a bunch of shiny rocks and metals assigned some arbitrary monetary value based on their relative rarity.

Anyhow, most of us have the luxury of not worrying about our everyday subsistance. This devalues the so-called spiritual value of the tools of survival. That is not to say that we shouldn't use whatever we have to give everyone else hand up.