The danger of consumerism
With our entire economy based upon desire for material goodswhich certainly goes against Buddhismit stands to reason that mind's development must be held back, for only mind has the capacity to end its servitude to desire, which makes it a threat to the consumerist ethos.
To become entranced by consumerism doesnt require much of an education. It doesnt take any intelligence to crave a new Ford pickup or a designer handbag. In fact, the only requirement to get a degree from 'Consumer University' is having the uncontrollable impulse to buy things. That one should give up their interest in an education based on wonder, exploration, experiment, and wisdom, is probably necessary.
To help the child crush any sense of wonder they might have, the American educational system is prepared to meet the challenge in which any high school graduate will look upon their education as 12 years of wrestling with the most immense kind of boredom conceivable. As a consequence of this boring education, in which the bud of wisdom is kept from blossoming, upon graduation, the only thing the average young person wishes to do is to abuse substances, have unprotected sex, and purchase material goods. It is only much later that they find out this leads to depression: that curious state of terrible loss when we dont know quite what it is weve lost! Only a few realize that they have lost something. Perhaps Paul Tillich describes the sense of this loss best.
"The anxiety of meaninglessness is anxiety about the loss of an ultimate concern, of a meaning which gives meaning to all meanings. This anxiety is aroused by the loss of a spiritual centre, of an answer, however symbolic and indirect, to the question of the meaning of existence."
To use another more common expression to explain this inexplicable loss, youth just sold their soul to the devil but with a twist: their parents and the state forced them to do it in the interest of education when in fact their! educati on was for the sake of consumerism. That portion of their being which is able to dive into higher meanings and contexts, was never developed. In fact, it remains undeveloped if not retarded. This poses a real danger, because if the brains higher centers are not adequately stimulated, the odds are good that one will be more or less depressed the rest of their lives. The best one can hope for, then, are brief moments of consumer rapture followed by a hangover of boredom.
