From: https://tildes.net/~talk/194r/have_we_become_programmed_to_be_too_materialistic
The end of capitalism and the modern productivity, power, wealth accumulation culture will realize as a painful revolution or extinction.
The nirvana of capitalism is the current state: straddling the fine line between the unhappiness of everyone at the bottom and accumulating as much as possible to the top. Keep people as stretched out, stressed, unhappy, disidentified as possible, but not enough to bring revolution. Either the planet and humans are destroyed or the value of humans is automated out of life itself (humans need not apply).
Right now the automation is driving people out of jobs, removing them of their usefulness and livelihood, thus making companies and processes more efficient and productive. This could be good, people in principle could all work less, but those benefits are only reaped by the companies, not the people being automated out.
The end is where companies live for only themselves, without requiring humans at all, they may not even serve humans or humanity, only a couple of dudes at the top. Nothing for everyone else.
Space in Japan vs UK
Japan is a small island country (especially when compared to the US), so the Japanese have to be VERY mindful of space; whereas America has TONS of space, so people keep buying crap to fill said space.
Americans seem to say this a lot, but as an English person I’m not sure I buy it. The UK is about two thirds of the size of Japan and I’ve never encountered the idea that we have to be VERY mindful of space. Our homes are still full of junk, our kids still have too many toys (last time I saw my nephew he was literally complaining about having “thousands”). Granted it takes a lot less crap to fill our homes, but we still do without much thought, we’re far from a nation of minimalists.
Not that I buy Japan being a nation of minimalists, either. They have capsule machines literally everywhere selling plastic crap, and anime figurines were a huge thing before the funkopop craze hit “the west”. Pure clutter. Then there are the charms and accessories, I even saw a woman with a little keyring-type-thing hanging from the strap of her facemask when I was there recently.
Humans Have Always Been Greedy
I think greed has always been part of human civilization everywhere. It’s always been considered immoral and it’s always been demonized to some extent, but it’s always there - there are always greedy people wanting more. However, I’ll admit that certain forms of greed (especially forms that follow the rules of our current economic structure) are often justified and defended by many. Further, the West (and especially the U.S., more recently) have enjoyed a kind of materialistic wealth that has allowed those ever-present greedy elements to gain more than ever thought possible.
I think you’ll find literally hundreds of counter points to this statement in The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by anthropologist David Graeber, and archaeologist David Wengrow:
The authors open the book by suggesting that current popular views on the progress of western civilization, as presented by Francis Fukuyama, Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari, are not supported by anthropological or archaeological evidence, but owe more to philosophical dogmas inherited unthinkingly from the Age of Enlightenment. The authors refute the Hobbesian and Rousseauian view on the origin of the social contract, stating that there is no single original form of human society. Moreover, they argue that the transition from foraging to agriculture was not a civilization trap that laid the ground for social inequality, and that throughout history, large-scale societies have often developed in the absence of ruling elites and top-down systems of management. Synthesizing their findings, the authors move to discovering underlying factors for the rigid, hierarchical, and highly bureaucratized political system of contemporary civilization. Rejecting the category of “the State” as a trans-historical reality, they instead define three basic sources of domination in human societies: control over violence (sovereignty), control over information (bureaucracy), and charismatic competition (politics). From this they go on to argue that these civilisations were not direct precursors to our modern states, but operated on very different principles. The origins of modern states, they conclude, are shallow rather than deep, and owe more to colonial violence than to social evolution. Based on their accumulated discussions, the authors conclude by proposing a reframing of the central questions of human history. Instead of the origins of inequality, they suggest that our central dilemma is the question of how modern societies have lost the qualities of flexibility and political creativity that were once more common. They ask how we have apparently “got stuck” on a single trajectory of development, and how violence and domination became normalised within this dominant system. Without offering definitive answers, the authors end the book by suggesting lines of further investigation. These focus on the loss of three basic forms of social freedom, which they argue were once common: the freedom to escape one’s surroundings and move away, the freedom to disobey arbitrary authority, and the freedom to reimagine and reconstruct one’s society in a different form. They emphasize the loss of women’s autonomy, and the insertion of principles of violence into basic notions of social care at the level of domestic and family relations, as crucial factors in establishing more rigid political systems.
Capitalism and Humanism
It’s also important to note capitalism and humanism do not get along. They defeat one another.
Simply put, capitalism has won here in the west. The United States was both a refuge for religious extremists and a continuation of industry run amock in Europe. It was a religious and capitalistic venture. Not much room for human rights. It’s one of the few countries that has gone all in into capitalism, hasn’t had a class revolution, and has matured so much that it would be kind of impossible to have a French Revolution style of class war in the first place. We also haven’t decoupled from religion as those roots run pretty deep too.
So if capitalism is up, and human rights are down, it’s no wonder we are miserable.
You could also throw in philosophical maturity of which we have very little of as well. The east developed various philosophies like fielty and minimalism as thinly disguised ideologies that placate the masses and make them more easy to be controlled. I always sneer at the metric of happiness because I come from a third world country where people live in landfills and smile about it. That’s not a good thing, that’s just an ignorant person further beat into complacency by being happy with what little they have. That just benefits those in power even more. Not only did you take everything from the poor but they’re happy about it and have been defeated enough so they accept their lot.
The caste system in India is sort of like this, the toxic work culture in Japan is like this, hell most of their culture revolves around the need for dedicated and specialized roles and that’s accepted because of teachings on humility, fealty, and being content with nothing through teachings that vilify the ego. One can argue those philosophies are healthy, I would agree, and the people are happy, I can agree there too, but I can also argue there are those that exploit those benevolent teachings for the controlling mechanisms they are (both angles also explored in How the World Thinks - global philosophy).
Here in the west control is achieved through religion (US and South America). Humility and to be like Jesus, poor and simple and happy about it because your wealth is in heaven. It’s just another method of control so you’re okay with the “sinner” driving his Ferrari up and down the street.
Are we programed to be materialistic? Yes. That’s because there’s no community here, no heart here, no humanism here, no philosophy. Money is God and we’re miserable for it, but to paint the east as happier as a result, eh there’s room for discussion there.
Materialistic Individuality and Spiritualistic Communality
Materialism and Spiritualism are like two poles of Philosophy and life generally cycles between these two extremes like a Pendulum. Right now, human civilization in general is moving from Spiritualism to Materialism, this is the route that eventually leads to what you call “en-shitification”. Of course, the pendulum will eventually shift back but sometimes it might take a huge cataclysmic event for that to happen, the kind that ended the dark ages and started the renaissance probably.
While atheism can be good as a philosophical branch of academic interest, it can have ill-effects on society and people when taken too seriously in life. An athiest’s mindset or belief system rules out and rejects the existence of anything outside of the materially observable universe including soul or a belief in afterlife, which in turn leads that mindset to act on pure hedonistic or pleasure principle. In other words, pleasure and gratification of the self is the only thing that matters (???).