Materialism, Self-Esteem, Cows, Birds

nadim February 6th, 2008

The Science Blog has recently published an interesting study showing a direct correlation between levels of materialism and self-esteem in youth. The article asserts that positive reinforcement and peer acceptance increases self-esteem, with the result being a proportional decrease in attachment to material goods.

While this may be true in time-boxed studies like the one described, I can’t imagine that the solution is anything more than temporary. We all know that life doesn’t provide us with an endless supply of positive reinforcement - or to use the old cliché - life has it’s ups and downs. Perhaps, for a more lasting effect, we should expend our energy on educating youth (and adults for that matter) on the true worth of material possessions:

Consider ye! No matter how much man gains wealth, riches and opulence in this world, he will not become as independent as a cow. For these fattened cows roam freely over the vast tableland. All the prairies and meadows are theirs for grazing, and all the springs and rivers are theirs for drinking! No matter how much they graze, the fields will not be exhausted! It is evident that they have earned these material bounties with the utmost facility.

Still more ideal than this life is the life of the bird. A bird, on the summit of a mountain, on the high, waving branches, has built for itself a nest more beautiful than the palaces of the kings! The air is in the utmost purity, the water cool and clear as crystal, the panorama charming and enchanting. In such glorious surroundings, he expends his numbered days. All the harvests of the plain are his possessions, having earned all this wealth without the least labor. Hence, no matter how much man may advance in this world, he shall not attain to the station of this bird! Thus it becomes evident that in the matters of this world, however much man may strive and work to the point of death, he will be unable to earn the abundance, the freedom and the independent life of a small bird. This proves and establishes the fact that man is not created for the life of this ephemeral world — nay, rather, is he created for the acquirement of infinite perfections, for the attainment to the sublimity of the world of humanity, to be drawn nigh unto the divine threshold, and to sit on the throne of everlasting sovereignty!

(Abdu’l-Baha, Tablets of the Divine Plan, p. 44)

It’s hard to accept, but neither the Rolex nor the surround sound system nor the fancy new SUV will ever bring us the material success of the little guy in the picture!