.require "memo.pub[let,jmc]" source
.cb IN PRAISE OF MATERIALISM


	It is commonly said that life is wasted if it is spent in
pursuit of trivial material goals, and that the American middle
class in particular is at fault for this.  I would like to explain
why I believe that the intellectual campaign against this %2materialism%1
has done great harm and may lead to the destruction of civilization
and the loss of millions of lives.

	As an example of the truism with which I have come to disagree,
let me quote Henry Kissinger, %2

	"The contemporary unrest is no doubt exploited by some whose purposes
are all too clear.  But that it is there to exploit is proof of a 
profound dissatisfaction with the merely managerial and consumer-oriented
qualities of the modern state and with a world which seems to generate
crises by inertia.  The modern bureaucratic state, for all its panoply
of strength, often finds itself shaken to its foundations by seemingly
trivial causes.  Its brittleness and the world-wide revolution of youth -
especially in the advanced countries and among the relatively affluent -
suggest a spiritual void, an almost metaphysical boredom with a political
environment that increasingly emphasizes bureaucratic challenges and is
dedicated to no deeper purpose than material comfort".%1

"Central Issues of American Foreign Policy", in Kermit Gordon, ed.,
%2Agenda for the Nation%1 (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1968),
p. 614.

	No doubt it is pleasant to have a higher purpose for one's life.
If this purpose is one that will benefit society, then it helps society
for people to have such purpose.  However, it is not obvious that
talents, opportunities and inclinations are so distributed in the
population or even the intellectual part of it that everyone can
be driven by a higher purpose.

	The situation wherein a larger part of the affluent and
intellectual youth want such a purpose but don't have one is
destructive and dangerous.  The most readily available higher
purposes involve finding enemies to attack.  When the enemies
are one's own, it is bad enough, but one can eventually become
reconciled with one's enemies; when one gets to know them, one
often becomes less angry with them.  However, when the enemies
are vicarious, the situation is worse.  By vicarious enemies,
I mean that one is nominally acting for someone else, a maiden
in distress, one's oppressed coreligionists or the working class.
Then one cannot be reconciled, because the grievance is not
one's own, and the beneficiaries of one's concern are almost
always abstractions - there is no-one to say to the Red Brigade,
"Enough, you have killed enough people on my behalf".