Materialism

Are indebted, obese, binge-drinking, shop-til-u-shop Britons trapped inside a prison of wants?

“It Is No More Sinful To Be Rich Than Poor. But It Is Dangerous Beyond Expression.”

- John Wesley

There is little wrong, and much right, with prosperity and economic growth. Without the wealth and economic advance of recent decades hundreds of millions of children would still be dying in infancy. Tens of millions more people would be dying painful and premature deaths. Without growth societies enter zero-sum games with different interest groups competing with each other for a share of national income.

What is wrong is when societies overdose on material goods. The belief that consumption can satisfy is a gluttonous ideology. George W Bush has talked about “a prison of wants”. There are many signs that obese, binge-drinking, over-indebted, shop-til-u-drop Britain is becoming a materialistic society.

Materialistic Britain

In February 2005, 6,000 shoppers at a north London IKEA store fought each other to buy opening night bargains. Six people ended up in hospital. Twenty people collapsed from heat exhaustion. Pilgrims to Mecca are crushed and injured every year because of their devotion to their divine Maker. Britons prefer to worship at the shrine of a furniture-maker. The Observer’s Mary Riddell described how ambulances struggled to reach the scene as latecomer shoppers drove over roundabouts, reversed along a dual carriageway and generally behaved appallingly.

Britain works the longest hours in Europe to buy things that many people probably don’t need. The opportunity cost of long hours is time spent with loved ones – particularly children and the elderly. Children who don’t see their father are invariably less well-adjusted. Father absence can be a product of long hours as well as divorce. And is it really family-friendly for lone mums to be required by the welfare state to undertake the night shift at 24-hour petrol stations? We were once sickened by front page newspaper stories of old people who had died and lain undiscovered for a week or more. The stories still happen but they no longer shock rush-on-by Britain.

The superior alternative to a materialist society is a relational society in which public policy protects family and community space. Who after all, on her deathbed, tells her children that she wished she had spent more time at the office?

New Labour, New Philistinism

Neil Kinnock once accused Conservatives of being obsessed with ‘bottom-line’ financial considerations but Tony Blair’s New Labour government is the most philistine administration of modern times.

• Labour’s battle against child poverty is measured almost solely on financial grounds. No consideration is given to the impact on disadvantaged children of father absence. In fact single mums are encouraged to take jobs of any kind rather than stay-at-home to care for their children. Government provides practical encouragement to people wanting to start a business but no incentive to marry and therefore provide stability for partners and children.
• John Prescott has no respect for the intrinsic value of the English countryside and has planned to build hundreds of thousands of houses across it – consuming land equivalent to that currently occupied by the Birmingham metropolis.
• And, as Tim Collins, pointed out in an excellent address to the NASUWT, Labour’s education policies are obsessed with preparing students for work rather than introducing them to the richness of civilisation, religion and the arts. Mr Collins told teachers:

“It is surely time to reassert the fundamental principle that the purpose and value of education is far more than mere economics, or simple utilitiarianism. Our schools are not just the waiting rooms for the personnel departments of UK plc. Your job is a great deal more than the preparation of tomorrow's workforce. We need to declare again the worth of opening up minds, the value of creating opportunities, the beauty of knowledge and art and science for their own sakes. We need to focus less on crude commercialism, and more on the human spirit. Less on number-crunching and league tables, and more on the self-worth and happiness of the individual and the community. Perhaps it says a great deal about Britain under New Labour that it now takes a Conservative to articulate these truths - but truths they are.”