Reflections on Materialism

Our lives are con­tinu­ously bom­barded with images; music, films, and fash­ion among a hun­dred dif­fer­ent obstruc­tions that make most of us on some level feel that we need things or items to make our lives have a feel­ing of import­ance or that make us happy. How many adverts have you seen that tell you dir­ectly or indir­ectly that you need this phone or must buy the latest com­puter con­sole? There is no harm in humans need­ing a form of escape from the routine of daily life, but when humans are always look­ing for an escape and do not take the time to try and make them­selves happy without these items then we can end up in a soci­ety that cre­ate people that have lost or in a lot of cases nev­er exper­i­ence a life that is detached from all this mater­i­al­ism.

To have a level of detach­ment does not have to mean to shut out everything mater­i­al­ist­ic; it can just mean from time to time to have a break from all of it. How many of us if we look deep inside ourselves would feel com­pletely at peace in the middle of a desert for example with noth­ing around us apart from the food that we needed to sur­vive for a week, a few days or even a day. If we are not com­fort­able with this kind of action then I feel would it not help to think why we are not com­fort­able, rather than to keep ourselves busy with buy­ing products, watch­ing films or listen­ing to music. These actions only mask how we really feel.

If we can get to a level where we can ana­lyze ourselves and feel what makes us unhappy then we can try and find ways to com­bat this. This in time may lead you to a pos­i­tion in life where you do not need all these mater­i­al­ist items to make you happy. In time it can allow you to find a way to make your­self happy or feel at peace without the feel­ing of want­ing items. If you can get to this point in your life that will allow you to look at the images, listen to the music, watch the film or see the new fash­ion and not feel that you need them to make you feel import­ant or make you happy could this not be the start of a new and healthy soci­ety for all of us?

Art­work by Man­olis Ana­sta­sakos from Greece

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Arash Sharifi

Author at I Am Hip-Hop Magazine

Arash has been pas­sion­ate about Hip hop for many years. He believes through hip hop you can teach, edu­cate and empower people to become bet­ter ver­sions of them­selves and help and sup­port their com­munity and oth­ers. Hip hop is more than just music, it can be a teach­er to us all.

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