I start by recognizing that conspicuous consumption, buying to show off not to
meet needs, is the consequent of the "dominator paradigm" on which EuroAmerican
cultures are built. It is approximately unknown in other cultures that were based on
'reciprocity' and not 'money' or 'exchange.'
The Dominator Paradigm
Trickle Up Poverty
The "Dominator Paradigm" was potential in the Jewish creation myth. It holds that
the Earth was made for the use of man (and I do mean "man"). The man centered
philosophy was emphasized by the Greeks in the tenet that "man is the portion of
all things." The early Christian church amplified the trust that man is the purpose of
the Earth, and the Earth is the center of the universe. Following Aquinas, the Church
taught the "chain of being." Man is at the top of the chain with only a few celestial
being above. Below man in decending order are woman, children, other races,
animals, plants and the Earth itself. The purpose of each rung in the chain is to
serve, and be dominated by, the ones above.
This dominator paradigm was made the law of Europe by the Inquisition and the
burning at the stake of over one million so called heretics, mostly women, who
worshiped the Earth. It was spread world wide by the sword (technology), the flag
(nationalism), and the cross (Christianity). The right to dominate all other people,
cultures, and land was potential in the divine right of Christian kings, and the power
of the church. The Age of Discovery and Colonization not only made Europe
dominant throughout the world, but also carried the religious doctrine of the dominator
paradigm to all other countries.
The final control of EuroAmerican dominator paradigm was voiced in Adam Smith's
economic theory. The anointing of "self-Interest" as a logical, if not necessary,
extention of the religious concept moved the dominator paradigm beyond the
church and into the hands of government, the capitalistic elite, and secular society.
With this birth of "homo econimicus" material accumulation in self-interest became
a new morality that put competition and personal greed above all other human
moral attributes. The portion of EuroAmerican man is what he has, not what he is.
Consumption is thereby not immoral within the norms of the EuroAmerican
Cultures.
Human Nature & Cultural Norms
Anthropological, social, psychological, biological and other sciences are showing
that there is nothing natural about the EuroAmerican socioeconomic system. Most
other cultures were based on the understanding that humans and all of Gaia (the
Earth and all its life forms) are interdependent. Most cultures recognized that only
cooperation for the good of the whole could contribute good for the individual. They
existed on "reciprocity economics." That is, by the religious. If not common sense,
belief that each individual should produced for and serve the good of society. The
more one gave to others the more others gave to the giver. Owning whatever that
someone else needed more was taboo. Many cultures had now word for
"ownership." Self-poverty rather than self-interest was the rule.
This concept of cooperation is built into our genes. When humanids first came
down from the trees they were small, weak and without tools or fire. For some 5
million years they were the prey of hyenas, saber tooth tigers, and other large
carnivors together with some primates. There defense was cooperation. They lived in
large communities. They used their larger brains to carry on to exist. Only with in
the last few hundred thousand years did they invent tools and scrutinize the use of
fire and come to be hunters themselves. By then the basic human need for "belonging"
and "community" were built into their genes. The niche into which they evolved
was one in which most cooperative individuals survived. This basic human nature
has been overridden in the EuroAmerican cultures by the unnatural values of
competition, violence, greed, and material ownership, exemplified by immoral
consumption. The key value of these culture is what you have not what you are or
what you contribute to society.
Of course, other cultures were not immune for the evils of self-interest even before
the advent of the EuroAmerican dominator paradigm. But violence, robbery and
warfare in other cultures was primarily confined to struggles in the middle of cultures it
was not a norm of the internal cultural relationships as it is now. Few cultures, as
Margaret Mead, Malinowski, Boas and others have shown, taught their children
competition, self-interest, and greed.
The Gaian Paradigm
In the last few decades Chaos, Complexity, and Gaian theories and other scientific
research have brought humanity most radical new and separate understanding of
the cosmos and of human nature. These theories, in separate ways, show that the
cosmos is one and evolves as a unity. It is composed of whole systems embedded
in whole systems, and composed of whose systems, or holons all the way up and all
the way down -- atoms to molecules to cells, to life-forms, to humans. To social
systems. All thins from quarks to are interlocked and interdependent. The whole
holonistic law evolves as a unit. Nor part can turn without all others being
involved.
Gaia (the Earth and all of life) is a prime example. All the corporal attributes that
make life possible, the amount of oxygen in the air -- the climatic characteristic of the
planet, the salt in the ocean, the radiation reaching the earth, and others -- are
kept within life supporting bounds by biological processes. Life makes life
possible. Gaia is like a living law itself.
Applied to humanity and its societies Gaia suggests that no individual can exist
without the keep of all others. Self-interest, competition, and material
consumption are self-defeating.
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