Jan 23 2013: @ Fritzie, yes I consider all of those as non-material economies.
As an aside, the "Spiritual" in the topic title for me refers to storytelling, that's my religion. Used to call myself athiest until I realized what religion really is. A community sharing good stories that help us answer the question "what should I do in this situation" by substituting "what should the Hero do?" This is exactly what Christians mean by "what would Jesus do?" Joseph Campbell of course helped me to understand this.
And in response to the suggestions that this transition is already happening and is inevitable, you may be right. But this thought process is too close to apathy for me to be entirely comfortable with it. Though, I've been guilty of this sort of apathy too much myself. I used to try to make the world a better place through activism, working for non-profits, organizing communities, etc., and when I ran into one obstacle too many and gave up trying, I rationalized it to myself saying well, change is inevitable and will happen without my active participation. Time for me to take a break.
I guess to answer my own question, the thing I think we can all do to help this transition along isn't to look inward and make ourselves better people, but to seek out and support communities of people who are coming to a similar awareness. Just finding it rather tough at present to identify and join such a community.
Jan 23 2013: Something that I'm assuming is that all the material needs of everybody on the planet could be provided for with perhaps 10% of the total global economy. Food, shelter, basic health care. I'd like to see the other 90% of the economy shifted away from material goods. A big chunk of that 90% is energy used for personal transportation, manufacture of goods, and transportation of goods. Much of this can be reduced through localization. Resource sharing to reduce number of cars per capita and things like that.
But I'm not really trying to ferret out details of how to reduce material consumption, I'm trying to look at the possibility of shifting aspirations away from material concerns. Yes, experience is good, kind of falls into the education theme I was looking at.
And Century of the Self is a BBC documentary, shouldn't be hard to find.
Jan 22 2013: Well, first off, the world does change. Think about entropy for a moment, and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.
And, what I'm saying is that materialism is a values system. One which puts our planet's ecology out of balance when applied at the scale modern society is capable of. My notion/question is, can we substitute another values system in materialism's place.
And I'm certainly not arguing about capitalism vs. communism or egalitarianism vs. elitism, though these are other good subjects to consider. Also not talking about the function or flaws of the current education system.
Materialism has been deliberately promoted. Psychological advertising equating material success with social success for instance. Ooo! I want that car because I'll get a sexy girlfriend! Ooo! I want nice clothes so I'll be respected in the workplace! Can we instead advertise that some other kind of success is what we all really want? Instead of going to fancy restaurants or clubs where we spend lots of money for consumable goods, can we get to a place where instead we go to salons of conversation where all are both students and teachers gaining mutual respect while consuming minimal physical resources?
And note again that in the above example I'm not trying to imply egalitarianism, certainly in these conversation salons some will be more talented than others, thereby gaining more respect, and so keeping the status system of motivation in tact. Not to go too far into an aside, but I do believe that we are motivated by comparisons, and if everybody is the same, there will be no motivation. Everybody is not the same, and so there will be comparative differences among us in any system that will provide motivation. Too much difference is not good either, though. But again, this is just an aside to help you understand better what I'm trying to say.
Just this: can we substitute something immaterial in place of our currently materialistic economic systems?
TEDCred score: +0.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.
A comment on Conversation: Spiritual/immaterial alternates to materialistic economic systems?
As an aside, the "Spiritual" in the topic title for me refers to storytelling, that's my religion. Used to call myself athiest until I realized what religion really is. A community sharing good stories that help us answer the question "what should I do in this situation" by substituting "what should the Hero do?" This is exactly what Christians mean by "what would Jesus do?" Joseph Campbell of course helped me to understand this.
And in response to the suggestions that this transition is already happening and is inevitable, you may be right. But this thought process is too close to apathy for me to be entirely comfortable with it. Though, I've been guilty of this sort of apathy too much myself. I used to try to make the world a better place through activism, working for non-profits, organizing communities, etc., and when I ran into one obstacle too many and gave up trying, I rationalized it to myself saying well, change is inevitable and will happen without my active participation. Time for me to take a break.
I guess to answer my own question, the thing I think we can all do to help this transition along isn't to look inward and make ourselves better people, but to seek out and support communities of people who are coming to a similar awareness. Just finding it rather tough at present to identify and join such a community.
A comment on Conversation: Spiritual/immaterial alternates to materialistic economic systems?
But I'm not really trying to ferret out details of how to reduce material consumption, I'm trying to look at the possibility of shifting aspirations away from material concerns. Yes, experience is good, kind of falls into the education theme I was looking at.
And Century of the Self is a BBC documentary, shouldn't be hard to find.
A comment on Conversation: Spiritual/immaterial alternates to materialistic economic systems?
And, what I'm saying is that materialism is a values system. One which puts our planet's ecology out of balance when applied at the scale modern society is capable of. My notion/question is, can we substitute another values system in materialism's place.
And I'm certainly not arguing about capitalism vs. communism or egalitarianism vs. elitism, though these are other good subjects to consider. Also not talking about the function or flaws of the current education system.
Materialism has been deliberately promoted. Psychological advertising equating material success with social success for instance. Ooo! I want that car because I'll get a sexy girlfriend! Ooo! I want nice clothes so I'll be respected in the workplace! Can we instead advertise that some other kind of success is what we all really want? Instead of going to fancy restaurants or clubs where we spend lots of money for consumable goods, can we get to a place where instead we go to salons of conversation where all are both students and teachers gaining mutual respect while consuming minimal physical resources?
And note again that in the above example I'm not trying to imply egalitarianism, certainly in these conversation salons some will be more talented than others, thereby gaining more respect, and so keeping the status system of motivation in tact. Not to go too far into an aside, but I do believe that we are motivated by comparisons, and if everybody is the same, there will be no motivation. Everybody is not the same, and so there will be comparative differences among us in any system that will provide motivation. Too much difference is not good either, though. But again, this is just an aside to help you understand better what I'm trying to say.
Just this: can we substitute something immaterial in place of our currently materialistic economic systems?