Home » Academics » Nerds' Corner

Materialisms and Why They Matter, Part 1

Arguing is Fun

There are at least three good reasons to argue with your peers.

First, it's fun. Second, if you're good at it, and if they're reasonable, you can persuade them to believe what you believe. Third, by pushing an argument as far as it will go, you can test an idea for tenability. Your peers often have insights you don't, and they'll often notice weaknesses in ideas that you miss.

In this series, I'm going to foist an argument on you for the first and third of these reasons.

I'm going to argue that our common, everyday notion of materialism is both conceptually inadequate and spiritually unhelpful. (I'll say what our common, everyday notion amounts to in a moment.) Then I'm going to argue that, in spite of the fact that materialism is widely recognized as bad, it's a deeper problem for spirituality than most of us realize. Next, I'm going to argue that many self-proclaimed anti-materialists are really just materialists of another stripe, and that their variety of materialism is really no better than the variety they reject. After this, I'm going to offer a new and improved notion of materialism: one with leather seats and Bose® surround sound. Finally, I'm going to incorporate my new and improved notion of materialism into a bit of practical advice about spreading the gospel and living spiritually healthy ourselves.

Materialism I: "Consumer Materialism"

When someone says "materialism" we think of big houses, nice cars, expensive clothes, and other fancy stuff. Or, at least, we think of people who want big houses, nice cars, expensive clothes and other fancy stuff. Most of us have a rough and ready idea what the word means. But we can be a bit more precise, can't we?

Consider the following pairs of people:

The Owners
Juan owns a Hummer, a Mercedes and a Corvette. He has two houses, one of which is a huge mansion on a half acre lot in the suburbs. This mansion has a $6,000 plasma TV in each of its eight bedrooms. Juan can go skiing, golfing, biking, scuba diving and sailing without having to borrow or rent a single piece of equipment.

Jerry owns a Corvette, but it's his only car. He lives in an apartment downtown and only has a single TV. He owns his own golf clubs, but he has to rent or borrow anytime we wants to go skiing, biking or scuba diving, and he doesn't even know anybody with a sailboat.

The Users
Beth drives an enormous SUV that gets 4 gallons to the mile, she never carpools and she regularly drives places that are easily within walking distance. She leaves all the lights on in her house and commonly lets the sprinklers run overnight. She avoids buying things on sale and always picks the more expensive of two items.

Teresa drives a hybrid that gets 70 miles to the gallon, carpools when she can, and walks or rides her bike when driving isn't necessary. She does her best to save resources and energy around her home, and is generally very frugal, buying only what she needs, not worrying about name brands, and taking full advantage of a sale.

The Wanters
Terrence lives a pretty simple life. Compared to most Americans, he owns few things and consumes few resources. Though he'd like to have a car that's a little more reliable than the one he drives, generally speaking, he's a pretty content guy.

Sarah also lives a pretty simple life; compared to most Americans, she neither owns much nor consumes much. But this is only because she doesn't have any money. In contrast to Terrence, she finds herself deeply envious when she's around people like Beth and Juan. If she had the means, she'd buy everything in sight and consume resources without abandon.

None of us would hesitate to say that Juan is more materialistic than Jerry, that Beth is more materialistic than Teresa, and that Sarah is more materialistic than Terrence. So it appears that we've narrowed in on our concept. On the common use of the term, being a materialist amounts (more or less) to owning lots of stuff, using lots of stuff or wanting lots of stuff, and the more stuff you own, use or want, the more of a materialist you are.

Since owning stuff and using stuff both fall under the economist's notion of consumption, for the sake of clarity, let's refer to the common notion of materialism as consumer materialism. This will help us to distinguish it from another important kind of materialism.

Materialism II: "Ontological Materialism"

It's a free county and we can use the word "materialist" however we want. The fact is, though, there are more and less useful ways to use the term and, historically, people a lot smarter than you and I have used the term "materialist" to refer to something more basic than the consumption of goods and resources.

Historically "materialism" has named a metaphysical view according to which nothing exists but matter and motion. On this view, only physical things exist, and every event in the world can be explained in terms of physical objects and the laws of nature.¹

According to this variety of materialism, Juan's cars, houses and TVs all exist, since they're physical things made up entirely of smaller physical things.

Some other things that exist, according to this variety of materialism: hydrogen atoms, water molecules, planets, the o-zone layer, hurricanes, Yellowstone National Park, the glaciers of Antarctica, the Arch in Saint Louis, the Louvre and the paintings within it, radio waves, sound waves, microwaves, your heart, your lungs, your biceps, and so on. Again, each of these is a physical object or phenomena entirely explainable in terms of smaller physical objects and/or the laws of nature, so the materialist is happy to concede its existence.²

In contrast to these things, materialists deny the existence of God, angels, souls, minds, and so on.³ This, of course, is because God, angels, souls and minds aren't physical objects or phenomena entirely explainable in terms of smaller physical objects and/or the laws of nature. So, this variety of materialism entails atheism, it rejects the existence of any spiritual reality, and it denies the possibility of an afterlife.

For the sake of being clear, let's distinguish this variety of materialism from consumer materialism by calling it ontological materialism — "ontological" because ontology concerns what exists, and this variety of materialism tells us what kinds of things exist.

Materialism III: "Axiological Materialism"

An obvious difference between consumer materialism and ontological materialism is that the former has to do with values whereas the latter has to do with objects. The former concerns what we want; the latter concerns what there is. While the latter is a theory about what exists, the former is a view of the good life. The ontological materialist tells us that only physical things are real. The consumer materialist thinks the good life consists in owning and using lots of stuff.

But note that the things Juan owns and the resources Beth consumes are a small subset of all the material things there are. (In addition to Juan's mansion and Beth's 2,500 square-foot SUV, there are also national parks, paintings at the Louvre, human organs, and so on.) This is important because it highlights an asymmetry between ontological materialism and consumer materialism. Ontological materialism has to do with all the material objects that exist; consumer materialism has to do with a small portion of the material objects we might desire, covet, put our hope in, and so on.

But now consider a person who thinks of human well-being primarily in terms of the health of one's physical body, a person who thinks of human well-being primarily in terms of enjoying the arts or living a life with a certain aesthetic quality, and a person who thinks of human well-being primarily in terms of environmentalist considerations — perhaps, when this person considers questions about how to improve the quality of human life, the first thing he thinks about is global warming.

Our physical bodies, the artist's artifacts, and the ozone layer are all physical things. (Your heart is a collocation of cells, the Mona Lisa is an arrangement of oils on a canvas, the ozone layer is collection of gases.)They are all composed entirely of physical parts and fully describable in terms of physical processes. Isn't there an important sense, then, in which people who think of human well-being in terms of these things are materialists?

Suppose we say that, whereas a robust prayer life would be necessary for spiritual well-being, the health of your heart, the preservation of the Mona Lisa and the preservation of the ozone layer are all necessary (in some way or another) for material well-being. Then we can say that someone is an axiological materialist if she either thinks material well-being should be valued over every other form of well-being or manifests the actual habit of valuing material well-being over every other form of well-being.⁴

In Lieu of a Conclusion

OK, so all this clarification of terms was a bit boring. Having made a few important conceptual distinctions, let me apologize for the dry article and promise that the following article will be a lot more interesting.

C O F F E E  S H O P

---

What connection is there among these three types of materialism?

Join the discussion!

In the meantime, here's a question to give some consideration: How, exactly, are the three materialisms defined above related to each other? Is it a complete coincidence that all three varieties go under the label "materialism," or is this fact a sign of a deeper, more important connection between them?

I'll address this question in my next article.