At 09:47 2004-01-27 +1300 I (David) wrote: "Re: [LessIsMore] materialism"{at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LessIsMore/message/13776 },
  which is:

{on my Tuesday morning:}
· I don't see it in quite this way (continued below).

At 2 p.m. Monday afternoon (at 01:59 2004-01-26 -0500), Sharon F. wrote:
>Here's some food for deep thought for your Monday mornings.
>
> In considering the issue of materialism being the dominant value in U.S. culture, a friend of mine suggested that our current economic system demands
that it must be so. In western culture, "consumers" are so far removed from "producers" that relationships between raw materials and people are possible
only through monetary exchange. Most of us don't make anything ourselves, we only purchase it from someone who also did not make it. We have no opportunity to witness or experience the _work_ that fashioned the raw material into a product, thus we value only the product. Rampant materialism
is thus the only rational raison d'étre of a complex industrial society.
> That is why any religious leaders or social reformers who attempt to appeal to other values seem to end up banging their heads against the wall. 
>
>I have badly paraphrased my friend's brilliant remarks and probably warped the meaning in the process. But I'm curious to know if any of you have thoughts on this.
>
>For those who might be interested (maybe Priscilla), this was part of a theological discussion and continued from that point with my friend recommending the writings of Matthew Fox.
>
>Sharon Flesher
northern Michigan, USA
http://knitnthink.blogspot.com
sflesher@traverse.net
>
· The above friend's opinion starts with "this is what we have, we're 
stuck with it" ("the only rational raison d'étre of a complex industrial society"), without asking "who exactly gets most of the benefit from a complex industrial society?"

· Yes, the 2,000-years-old "bread and circuses" method of keeping the masses
from rioting really does work, particularly with the mind-bending capability
of television-controlled-by-big-business. The "bread" is now cheap-enough processed food, a microwave, and for 99%, a place to live. There _has_been_ benefit to the masses, from the OECD's complex-industrial-society economics.

· So "any religious leaders or social reformers who attempt to appeal to other values seem to end up banging their heads against the wall."

· But the politicians don't _have_ to be beholden to the rich and big corporations. In my lifetime (this first, from the late-30s):
 "WPA, an ambitious New Deal program, put 8,500,000 jobless to work, mostly
on projects that required manual labor with Uncle Sam meeting the payroll":
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wpaintro/intro01.html
  And there was effective political interest in improving the ordinary family's standard-of-living in the 1940s and 50s. Government that people respected, and wanted to assist by working for and paying their taxes gladly

· So it's the few-million rich, who take most of the wealth produced by the current complex-industrial-society economic system, who are doing wrong.
It's the _admiration_ for the shadowy Bill-Gates-peers that must be attacked

· In parallel with tearing down this _admiration_ for the rich, building up a better alternative should be worked on. One way is to be a Quaker, or at least admire their goals; the above "discussion continued from that point with my friend recommending the writings of Matthew Fox."

· The third leg for your stool is IMO to work hard to _reduce_ the power of the un-representative groups which currently have (grabbed) the power over most people's lives: people ruling big corporations, and almost all those in recent US and British Administrations.
(i)  Reject the influence they might have in _your_own_ life.
(ii) Write letters-to-the-editor, go to demonstrations, join suitable groups; in a word, do as Jill has been doing for years.

· Make the-powers-that-be worried about whether they can continue to hold onto power. The Hungarians did it; the East Germans did it; and a few weeks ago the Georgians (near the Caucasus, eastern Europe) did it.

· Never give up. (Again: Jill didn't, though it was close!)

David.
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At 11:34  2004-01-27 -0000, Gary wrote:
I'm with you, David!  I agree with everything you say.

By the way, David Korten (I continue to quote him because he has done 
such a fine job of summarizing the issues) explains why the U.S. 
economy boomed after WWII.  It is because the government began riding 
herd over the economy during the war and in addition had installed 
graduated income tax policies that redistributed wealth from the 
wealthiest of our society.  It thereby provided an economic 
environment that allowed for the healthy growth of the American 
middle class -- including a healthy upward mobility to that middle 
class from the working class.  Due to government regulation against 
monopolies and its graduated tax policies, there weren't the wide 
variances of income between rich and poor that we see today.

For example, in the 1950s corporations provided over half of the 
revenue derived by Washington from income taxes.  Today, it's only 7% 
(as quoted from the AARP newsletter).  In the 1950s, corporations 
provided a hefty portion of local revenue from property taxes.  Today 
their contribution is miniscule.  

This all came to an end with Nixon but ESPECIALLY with Reagan, Korten 
states.  And who made up the difference in tax revenues?  The average 
American tax-payer.  And who benefitted from this change?  The 
richest of our society.  No WONDER the Republicans want to put 
Reagan's face on Mount Rushmore.  

Gary