ADBC: 43 – Consumerism, The Armed Forces and the Worth of being Well-Travelled

My brother’s responses are ofttimes filled with beautiful introspection. And his last installment is no different. A pleasure to read. He does great analysis of the notion of hate crimes, even showing how flaky the wording of such notions are. He relates the struggles of being a real man and proper husband. That, I found to be dealt with sensitively and with eyes wide open on his own past, his influences, and the popular views of manhood that we confront. His answer about how to enjoy life has a deceptive simplicity to it. It makes a strong point about a key element to such enjoyment that does make me think.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. You can too. Go here.

My turn.

Q – What is your understanding of the concepts of materialism and consumerism. Do these hold a moral value to you (that is to say, do they lend themselves to being seen as being bad/good for humans to pursue)? Please, as ever, explain your thinking.

There are two understandings that I have of materialism. But you connected materialism with consumerism which then limits the contextual meaning to one understanding. I won’t refer to a dictionary as you asked for my understanding.

In this context, I understand “materialism” as a devotion to material gain. By “material gain,” I mean the accumulation of physical assets of financial worth, like clothes, shoes, cars, etc. So this desire for material gain is not about meeting one’s needs, but is an end in itself. So getting clothes is not the means of having enough changes in garment so as not to wear out or make odorous one’s clothes through overuse. It’s buying and having the clothes, especially pricey or fancy clothes, that is the ends, the goal, in and of itself. Getting a car is not just to have the means to get from one destination to another by one’s own motorised conveyance safely. It’s getting the car, especially a pricey or attractive one, that is the end in and of itself. I wonder how wrong my current understanding is.

Consumerism refers to the devotion to being a consumer. Being a consumer means one who purchases goods, but not just any good. If a person goes to the shop to buy food for one’s family and things to maintain the home, I don’t think the term refers to just the needs of life. I believe it more refers to devotion to buying luxury items, or buying only for the sake of buying rather than for a worthy cause.

Again, I may be totally wrong. I guess I’ll find out after I finish writing this.

When I think about the example that God sets by means of his laws and teaching, I see purpose and the importance of balancing goals and the way you get to those goals against an objective morality.

Wow, … just thinking about the Jewish Bible gives me so many ways to attack this topic. I don’t know if I’m gonna spit them out, short points with brevity, or dwell on one or two. We’ll see shortly.

When God made the world, the record in Bereshith [Genesis] 1, he made it anthropocentrically. That means he made everything with man as the end goal, in the same way a house-builder creates and arranges a house for the comfort and convenience of the person who will live in that home. When such a person builds the house, he doesn’t, for example, make a functioning kitchen and install a stove so that the person who lives in it will just say “hey, I have a stove and that is all.” The stove is for the sake of cooking things for the sake of bettering or maintaining the life of the person who lives in that home. The kitchen and the stove is not an ends in itself, but are the means to an end, just a tool. The space each room has is not simply for a person to say, “all I ever wanted was space since that is my ultimate goal.” No, it is for the purpose of using that space for one goal or another, normally to arrange items in that space that also are tools of function or purpose, be it a bed or a chair or a workbench.

So God’s making of the world was made for the use of man, each thing only being a tool, something for the development of man. This fits in with the first command, or one of the first things God said, to man: “Master it.” The Hebrew term, if you look in a dictionary, refers to subduing something, making it your servant. And this is the important point. Man must control his environment and that environment becomes a tool for him to develop himself.

So the things that God makes, the matter, is to become the tools, the means, of a man made in the image of God, the imprint of judgment, balancing, the skillful use of tools for a righteous ultimate end.

That’s what I see in the creation account.

In consumerism and materialism, the role of a person is distorted. No longer are the material world and the power to possess the means of a good ultimate end. The material world and the power to possess become ends in and of themselves.

It is similar to the narrative Maimonides recounts about the beginnings of idolatry, where man looked at the great things in the sky, like the sun, moon and constellations, and on the earth, such the thunder and great mountains, and elevated them as time went by. First he saw tools, instruments for functions. Then he saw their might and/or beauty and honoured them as ministers of God. Then, as time went on, he elevated them higher until, as any minister or deputy of a king, they demand honour. Then after honour came sacrifice. Eventually, he saw them as ends, as gods, in and of themselves. The outcome was idolatry where a true and ultimate goal gets usurped by a lesser. It’s essentially a delusion.

And it’s this delusion that’s in consumerism and materialism (and, funnily enough, atheism, which is linked to the other understanding I have of materialism). Instead of being devoted to a higher and righteous cause and using what can be bought or possessed as a means towards becoming a better person looking beyond the superficial and material to see the unseen truth and become a better person, a master, those that are caught by the deceptions of consumerism and materialism become mental (and physical) slaves to the physical world. The physical and material world is no longer the thing to be subdued but becomes the master. A man is slave to his cravings. He will put his power and effort into the acquisition when he is bound to the need to acquire.

Stunted growth is where a person does not reach a healthy height at a certain time in their life. They’re supposed to have a purposed aim and they fall short due to some unhealthy element in their constitution (HA! – even I didn’t see the double entendre in that statement until I wrote it; I didn’t expect to talk about politics too). And a consumerist and materialist fall short of their purpose because they get fixated on toys until the toys become an end in and of themselves, not the means to develop and mature to adults who grow beyond toys to fulfilling purposes.

So would my mental flow be related to the common addiction or obsession on games and sports? Is this why “bread and circuses” are easy ways to distract people?

Wow, that was only one aspect of materialism and consumerism, or at least my understanding of it, on a superficial level. And I do mean it is a superficial level. Why? Because I’ve learned that, for some idolators, the stone image, the physical representation, of their god isn’t actually their god. Instead the images represents a spirit or some non-physical aspect. So even when the image is destroyed, they can build it elsewhere. And in a similar way, the goal of acquisition of the material isn’t just about the material, but about some psychical or psychological aspect of the materialist/consumerist.

I’m reminded of a female work colleague and her spoken desperation to get some shiny new shoes, even though she had plenty of shoes. Then she has to make sure to buy clothes that match the shoes. And she does all these things “to feel good about herself.” I can see the materialism and consumerism there. But I see something else, deeper, as in, what she identifies with.

Anyway, that’ll lead to a longer article and I think this one is long enough already.

Q – The armed forces are a necessary evil. Discuss.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the “armed forces” refers to the combined military might of a “nation” or “nations, the army, navy and airforce. This refers to a fighting force that is obedient to something called “a nation.”

The term “nation” is important because I believe it, at least in modern times, to refer not to the individuals that inhabit a landmass, but rather to the ruling class, the owners of the populace.

So this “armed force” refers to a group of individuals who, whether voluntarily or through conscription (involving coercion), fight for the ruling class of some political turf.

You’ll see that I skipped over useless euphemisms or flowery language. I didn’t speak of “fighting for one’s country” or “fighting for liberty” or “defending one’s way of life” or any of the processed faeces that is produced by the national mind-controllers, the marketers hired by the political class. I just aim to get the basic and real definitions without the patriotic spin or garb.

Now I notice the statement in question is not “defending the lives of yourself, your family and community through the use of defensive force or violence is a necessary evil.” I would give a different answer. No, the statement is that “the armed forces is a necessary evil.” To flesh that out, this means that slaves and mercenaries fighting for a political agenda, under the orders of ruling politicians, is an evil which is needful for one reason or another. That demands a different analysis. Firstly, is such a force evil? Secondly, is such a force necessary? And necessary for what?

I haven’t included the police in this, even though they are another political army. I believe that, in the past, the ones who upheld the dictates of the rulers were the army, soldiers, those who had a certain allegiance with the rulers. It’s my belief that police, upholding politician dictate upon or against the people are still very much an army. But I’ll overlook that form of oppression and oppressor for now. (Should I? … *shrug*) Or include it. I don’t know. What I say next may still apply to them.

Now the armed forces are slaves to the will of the ruling class. They pledge allegiance to the government or ruling class. Even though the UK soldiers make a pledge of allegiance to the queen, as I said in my last response, the queen is just an empty figurehead for the government, just a puppet that utters their edicts. They fight where they are sent and to whom they must fight against. So, in a sense, they are just a tool and one could claim they have neutrality, being used by any ruler for any purpose. Unfortunately, they are part of a system that rebels against God’s laws, under rulers that abrogate the active application of divine law, and many times reject its source. The rulers ever work against God’s law, creating laws that protect those who commit the forbidden acts. There is no truly morally good political leader and the political agenda is rarely, if ever, a good one. That makes politicians and their system evil. And the armed forces are the physical strength of that evil. When they are sent here and there in the world to fight, the real motives of their commission and the way they fulfil that commission can and should be questioned and doubted, even condemned. Why? Because they mainly follow the agenda of the evil, the evil agenda. Hence, yes, the armed forces can be called evil, even if, at times, they perform a superficial good.

To put it another way, if only politicians existed, having not physical force, then we would just have opinionated people flapping their jaws and no one would be forced to comply to their opinions. It is the army in its various forms (including the police) that make the evil of the politicians real through the threat and actualisation of physical force.

Example. Under false pretenses (weapons of mass destruction), the armed forces of various countries invaded Iraq, resulting in numerous casualties over the years they spent there. They were not a force of good, but, instead, were the violent arm of an evil agenda.

Just like with a good number of government thugs, this is not to say every single act done by every single soldier was evil. But the armed forces accomplish evil goals for the ruling class.

One more thing. The armed forces are funded by robbery, the money that the government demands its slaves give under threat of violence.

Someone could challenge my claim by asking, what if the armed forces were only funded by voluntary donations and only followed a moral agenda would they be evil then? And my response would be that this is like asking about unicorns or Santa Claus. First it should be shown that such an entity exists so that we are talking about real things, not extinct, fictional or hypothetical creatures.

Another argument against the idea of the armed forces being evil would be the fact that I refer to the armed forces as a tool for the politicians, and someone could say that tools aren’t evil, the people using them are. You don’t blame the gun for the murder, you blame the murderer. The problem with this argument is that I’m not talking about an inanimate object. The armed forces are not an inanimate object. It is a group of people who make a volitional choice to act upon orders, regardless of the morality of those orders.

According to the seven laws, if a person hires an assassin and the assassin kills the desired target, then it is the assassin that is liable for the death penalty for murder. Why? Because the assassin is not the hirer and therefore has a different will to the hirer. He chose to actually do a forbidden act. 

In the same way, those who choose to fight for an unjust government and follow its immoral orders are culpable for their own actions.

So, yes, the armed forces are an evil. But are they a necessary evil?

For politicians, yes. Without the army, they would have no power. Without the army, many of their agendas couldn’t be realised. Without presenting the gun or the threat of harm or death, the robber, rapist and blackmailer has no way to get his will imposed on others. I would say “this is the same with government” but that would be redundant as I think I’ve already described them. So yes, for those in power, the armed forces are necessary. Since those forces are evil, then it’s a necessary evil.

Are the armed forces necessary for other functions? Some would claim, based on questionable historical narratives and modern propaganda that these armed forces “secured our human/constitutional/civil/unalienable rights or freedom” or “defend the country.”

Unfortunately, “rights” aren’t real (see here and here and here). A human being is owed nothing just on account of him being human. There is no naturalistic basis for “rights” and no divine one either. It is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, to say the armed forces, who work for the government, a system of coercive control, fights for freedom (see here).

If one army is about to attack a populace or has attacked it, and the people come together to fight off the attack, that would be the use of armed force, armed men, maybe some women, to defend against an attack or to free oneself from oppression. But would such a group be called “the armed forces?” I don’t know. A lot of me says no. But just in case I’m wrong, this would be the case where the armed forces are necessary, but not evil. The answer is still no, this specific form of “armed forces” would not be a necessary evil

I think I’ve typed enough.

Q – “Travelling to different countries/cultures is an overrated experience and not essential to lead a fulfilling life.” What are your thoughts on this perspective?

I’ll split this claim into two.

1. Travelling to different countries or seeing different cultures is an overrated experience, and
2. Travelling to different countries or seeing different cultures is not essential for a fulfilled life.

I would agree with both for the most part.

Here’s what I can grasp. Going to different places just to visit, not to live, is like only tasting a drink. It’s not drinking deeply, filling one’s mouth and stomach with the liquid. It’s just a taste that passes away.

In addition, if a person just stays in hotels, and the pleasurable part of the foreign land, then what of the other culture does one truly experience?

But if a person goes to another land to truly experience it, to live there and learn about the culture, to make it a part of oneself, then what is the purpose? I guess it’s all subjective, right? Everyone does these things for their own reason. Is it so that one can get a foreign language skill? For what? A job? Just for enjoyment? To live in the foreign land?

I think people just know how to enjoy these subtle differences in life. Going from one place to another just to come back and for life to continue as usual … I see pointlessness. They are excited to go and disappointed to come back. They somehow enjoy doing many of the same things but in a different place, maybe in a different way. I don’t get it.

My wife looks forward to going on holiday or going away to visit family. Again, I don’t get it.

There is a part of me, a growing part of me, that thinks that people should stay with their own and build their own tribal communities. Sure, there can be interaction between different people and if there is something to learn about the other culture, a person can learn that way, passing through on a necessary and/or purposeful journey. But to build a foundation of a people, from the family outwards, that should be the experience.

Oh, I know. I know. The world is already plenty fractured. The reason people can go and come to experience other communities is that the world, the family, the community is, for many, maybe just the western world, already broken. The mystery of an unknown culture is more enticing that one’s one. Multiculturalism and the cultic nationhood, or the nation-cult, has already eroded the tribe. By “cultic nationhood” or “nation-cult” I refer to the practice of people becoming slaves to the same government by means of a passport or pledge, the nation no longer being a family having the same ancestor, but a mixed-up group under one government, the weakened feet of an idol made up of a mixture of iron and clay.

You may already see my opinion of the notion that travelling is essential to having a fulfilled life. A fulfilled life in some ways is subjective again, but, I believe, has to do with how one’s values one’s own deeds and achievements. I’m sure some may say “I had a fulfilled life because I travelled around and saw different things.” Maybe that’s what one values.

But someone else may never have taken a step away from their own people, or even their hometown, and value what they’ve done in and for their own community. This latter example, which I do not think is hypothetical, is the evidence that travelling is not essential to having a fulfilled life. In fact, if a fulfilled life is valuing one’s own experiences, then that has nothing to do with travelling whatsoever.

Objectively, a fulfilled life is one with the knowledge of truth (and God) and finding one’s individual purpose and living that to the full. Yeah, I’m just stating that with no backup. I don’t have to bring up the Bible verses I always use (like statements about the image of God, and the end of the book of Qoheleth [Ecclesiastes]). This fulfilled life has nothing to do with travelling.

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So, let’s find some questions for you.

Q – Please watch and consider this video. Please relate your experience of and evaluate your observations of the interweaving of faith and the human desires and imaginations about space travel. What are the similarities and differences between science (so called?) and science-fiction? Are they based on faith and do they exhibit religious devotion?

Q – What are your thought on the advice given not to get involved in another person’s fight, as related in the fable of “The Vultures and the Pigeons” (found here in a video or here in a relatively short read)? How do you feel it interacts with world politics?

Q – What does bodily health mean to you?

Man, I struggled with your questions over four days, no five (Tuesday to Saturday), amid distractions like work and kids. So if it seems wonky, maybe that’s a reason.

Peace.